Craig Gilbert

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

With less than two years to go before the 2020 election, President Donald Trump faces an uphill climb in winning a second victory in Wisconsin, a battleground that will be at the epicenter of the next presidential campaign.

Here are three major takeaways from a statewide poll of 800 registered voters released Thursday by the Marquette Law School, its first survey since the 2018 election:

High disapproval. Right now, Trump has a precarious path to victory in Wisconsin, a state he won by less than one point in 2016. His approval rating is 44 percent — higher than it is in most national polls, but lower than it was here last fall and weighted down by the unpopular government shutdown that just ended.

More importantly, polls throughout his presidency have consistently shown that close to half the potential electorate is dug in against him. In the Marquette survey taken Jan. 16-20, 52 percent disapprove of his job performance, 46 percent “strongly” disapprove and 49 percent say they will “definitely vote for someone else” in the next presidential election. That doesn’t mean Trump is doomed to lose. But it means his window for victory is a very tight one.

In 10 Marquette polls since Trump took office, his approval rating has never topped 47 percent. The share of voters who disapprove of him has equaled or exceeded 50 percent in the past nine polls dating back to June 2017.

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Democrats more unified than Republicans. In a polarized age, a politically successful president needs a unified partisan base because he or she is likely to have a unified partisan opposition. But Democratic voters have been much more united against Trump than Republicans have been in support of him.

Consider how Wisconsin voters in each party answered this question: “If the 2020 presidential election were held today, would you definitely vote to re-elect Donald Trump, probably vote to re-elect Trump, probably vote for someone else, or definitely vote for someone else?”

Among Republicans, 58 percent said they would definitely vote for Trump, 22 percent said they would probably vote for Trump, 6 percent said they would probably vote for someone else and 10 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else. That is a party with a few cracks in it. Fewer than six in 10 GOP voters say they are certain they would support the Trump in the next election.

Among Democrats, there isn’t much doubt: None said they would definitely vote for Trump, 1 percent said they would probably vote for Trump, 4 percent said they would probably vote for someone else and 95 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else.

You see a similar pattern when you look at Trump’s approval ratings. Democratic voters are almost all deeply negative, while GOP voters are not monolithically supportive. Among Republicans, 60 percent strongly approve of the president, 23 percent somewhat approve, 6 percent somewhat disapprove and 8 percent strongly disapprove. Among Democrats, 1 percent strongly approve, 2 percent somewhat approve, 6 percent somewhat disapprove and 89 percent strongly disapprove.

Opposition more intense than support. The intensity of public opinion matters a lot in politics and it is not on Trump’s side: 30 percent of Wisconsin voters “strongly” approve of him and 46 percent “strongly” disapprove. These people (three-quarters of the electorate) are pretty locked in, to Trump’s disadvantage. The other quarter of the electorate is soft in its opinion: 14 percent of voters “somewhat” approve, 7 percent “somewhat” disapprove and 4 percent don’t know.

If you do the math, you see that as things stand now, Trump has to win an overwhelming share of these “soft” voters (whether they are pro-Trump or anti-Trump) to have a chance at carrying Wisconsin.

But the Marquette poll illustrates why this is a challenge.

Start with Trump’s base: the “strong” approvers. Again, that’s 30 percent of registered voters in this poll. Close to 80 percent of this group say they would “definitely” vote for Trump in 2020 and most of the others say they would “probably” vote for him, according to data from the survey provided by Marquette pollster Charles Franklin.

But because Trump’s core base of support isn’t nearly big enough by itself to get him re-elected, he needs the votes of the next tier in the electorate: the voters who only “somewhat” approve of him. Many of these voters have qualms about Trump’s honesty or performance as president or the direction he’s taken the Republican Party.

This second group comprises 14 percent of the voters in Marquette’s poll. But they are dramatically less certain to vote for Trump, according to the poll. Only 25 percent of these soft Trump approvers say they would definitely vote for Trump (compared to 76 percent of the "strong" approvers); another 45 percent say they would probably vote for him, while 30 percent either don’t know or say they’re likely to vote against him.

“I think what we see here is that within that 44 percent who approve of Trump overall, there is a large group who strongly approve and are very loyal for the 2020 vote,” said Franklin. “But when we go to those (soft approvers) who have some reservations, that voting loyalty drops off precipitously. That reflects a potential fragility of his coalition.”

Even if they unite behind Trump in the next election, these soft Trump supporters aren’t really numerous enough to put him over the top. (He would probably still have to convert some people who currently disapprove of the job he's doing.) But if these soft supporters don’t unite behind him, that would kill his hopes of winning the state. And at this moment, many of them appear to be in play.

The caveats in this analysis are familiar ones. No single survey is gospel. While Trump’s job ratings have been pretty consistent in Wisconsin, these numbers will bounce around a bit from poll to poll. Moreover, Trump will be running in 2020 against an actual Democrat with his or her own negatives, not the unnamed opponent he is being measured against in today’s polls. The fight for the Democratic nomination could prove divisive, leaving that party less unified that it looks right now.

And, of course, Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 despite high negatives — precisely because he won the votes of many voters who had qualms about him.

But he also won it by the slimmest of margins. Now that he is president, he has fiercely mobilized the opposition.

What all the Trump polling shows is not that he can’t possibly eke out another victory in Wisconsin, but that his path to victory here appears to be both steep and narrow.