Craig Gilbert, and Bill Glauber

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Despite repeated trips to Wisconsin and despite his gains in national polls, there’s little sign that Donald Trump is erasing Hillary Clinton’s edge in this battleground state, according to the final pre-election survey by the Marquette University Law School.

Clinton tops Trump 46% to 40% among the 1,255 likely voters polled last Wednesday through Monday.

Clinton’s six-point lead was one point smaller than her lead in Marquette’s previous poll, taken Oct. 6-9.

The new survey suggests that Trump is still suffering from a problem no GOP nominee can afford in a state where Democratic voters typically outnumber Republicans: He is under-performing in his own party.

Only 81% of Republican voters are backing Trump in the new poll. That’s a bit better than the 76% who supported him in early October, suggesting some GOP voters are “coming home” to their nominee after a great deal of party turmoil.

But it still falls short of the backing Clinton is getting from Democrats (89%).

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That gap in partisan loyalty has dogged Trump all year, and is a principal reason he has trailed Clinton every time (13 in all) that Marquette has polled Wisconsinites about the two candidates, dating back to the summer of last year.

There is a similar pattern when it comes to each party’s ideological base: Trump is losing 15% of conservatives to Clinton, while Clinton is losing just 8% of liberals to Trump.

On the map, these patterns help explain the softness of Trump’s vote in the heavily suburban counties north and west of Milwaukee – the GOP’s geographic base in Wisconsin. Trump hasn’t generated the level of support his party normally gets in the reddest part of the state.

The new poll suggests that trend is ongoing: Trump and Clinton were tied in a GOP-leaning region that takes in the entire Milwaukee media market except for the Democratic city of Milwaukee.

The poll also found that Trump’s failure to fully consolidate Republicans has more to do with his standing with women than men. While 86% of Republican men are supporting Trump, only 76% of Republican women are doing so.

Marquette pollster Charles Franklin said he was struck by “just how stable people have been in their fundamental perceptions of these candidates.”

In most of Marquette’s polling since summer, Clinton’s lead has stayed within a range of 3 to 7 points.

Both candidates have consistently suffered from a poor image, though Trump’s negatives have been consistently higher than Clinton’s.

“She’s pretty consistently held an advantage on most of the traits, the exception being honesty,” said Franklin. “But empathy, (she has) a consistent advantage, and qualifications, a very substantial advantage.”

Franklin said the unpopularity of the two might be dampening the volatility of the race, making it very difficult for voters who have qualms about their own party’s candidate to move to the other party.

“I think that has stabilized the race in an odd kind of way. While people may not be that happy with their own nominee, they’re very unhappy with the prospect of the other side,” he said, adding that the state's deep partisan polarization has also prevented large swings in the race.

Overall, a big gender gap persists, though it’s a bit smaller than it was in early October: Clinton leads by 15 among women and trails by 4 among men.

Education remains another dividing line: Among non-Hispanic whites, Clinton leads college-educated voters by 7 but trails non-college voters by 4.

Urban voters favor Clinton by 27 points and suburban voters favor her by 10. But rural voters favor Trump by 12 (based on how voters describe their own communities).

The news that the FBI is looking at more Clinton emails broke as the poll was underway, so Marquette was able to compare voter preferences before the story was reported last Friday to voter preferences after the news came out.

Clinton’s lead was only slightly larger before the story came out than it was afterward.

One notable change was that the share of Republicans backing Trump shot up from the low 70s to the high 80s after the story broke.

Overall, 50% of likely voters said they were “bothered a lot” by Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, and 23% said they were “bothered a little.”

Those results were almost identical to the levels of concern expressed by voters about Trump’s “videotaped comments about how he treats women.”

The two candidates appear to be making very different assumptions about where the race stands in Wisconsin.

Trump has made repeated visits to the state, including Tuesday in Eau Claire. He and his allies are on track to spend more than $2 million on TV in the final weeks of the race, indicating the state's in play.

Clinton has not made a general election campaign trip here, and has booked less time on TV, according to a source with knowledge of media buys.

Trump’s frequent travel to Wisconsin may look like a shaky investment based purely on the public polling. But his electoral path is narrower than Clinton’s. Because Republicans have lost ground elsewhere on the map, Trump must try to capture some states that have consistently voted Democratic for president.

The Great Lakes region is the obvious place to turn, because its population makeup – lots of blue-collar white voters – lines up with Trump’s demographic appeal.

But this latest poll suggests that in Wisconsin, at least, the effort to expand the Republican map remains an uphill climb.