MADISON (WKOW) — The first statewide poll since last November’s election included some adaptations as more people are hesitant to participate in polls and ditch landline phones.
Charles Franklin, Director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said pollsters for the first time conducted more than 70 percent of their interviews with people by cell phone.
In order to reached the final sample of a little more than 800 people, Franklin cited needing a little bit more persistence – calling people back multiple times if they did not answer the initial call.
“You’d be surprised at how many times we actually get somebody on the second of third or fourth call attempt and get a completed interview with them,” Franklin said.
The poll offered the first approval rating for President Joe Biden in Wisconsin since his election. 49 percent said they approved his performance so far while 46 percent said they disapprove; the response was within the margin of error, which was 3.8 percentage points.
“I think the right takeaway is that he looks a little bit positive but there’s uncertainty about how strong that positivity or possibly negativity might be,” Franklin said.
While Sen. Ron Johnson saw his unfavorable rating slide up six points from 36 percent last October to 42 percent in the August poll, 23 percent still said they had no opinion of the senior senator.
Franklin cautioned it was the third-lowest net-negative rating Johnson had since first being polled in 2013 – and in the two worse showings, Johnson won re-election a year later.
“His his two lowest favorability ratings came in 2015,” Franklin said. “Of course, he went on to win re-election in 2016.”
Gov. Tony Evers held steady with his favorability rating. The combination of 50 percent approval and 43 percent disapproval aligned exactly with the response in the October 2020 poll. Franklin said consistent performance is not necessarily unusual, but noted it was remarkable the ratings remained unmoved despite a series of major events happening over the 10-month period.
“It’s striking that a lot has happened since October of 2020; we’ve had the state budget proposal, the debate over the budget proposals, the passage of it, vetoes of things Evers vetoed,” Franklin said.
Evers’s approval ratings were higher than 50 percent at the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. In subsequent polls, the rating dipped as cases spiked last fall and Evers has settled at 50 percent since.
Addressing Delta Spread
While Wisconsin hit a bit of a milestone Friday with 50 percent of the population not fully vaccinated, UW-Madison Epidemiology Professor Ajay Sethi noted it still was not enough to contain the spread of the Delta variant in Wisconsin, where the number of hospitalizations and average number of new cases per day were both at their highest levels since February.
“Not surprising. We have too many people across the state who aren’t vaccinated,” Sethi said. “The Delta variant, which is now the dominant strain, is highly infections.”
The Marquette Poll revealed just how partisan the vaccine issue has become. 87 percent of respondents who identified as Democrats said they were vaccinated, compared to 71 percent of Independents and 45 percent of Republicans.
Sethi said breaking through a tribal mentality over the vaccine was a “tough nut to crack” but added it could be done if trusted family and friends were able to persuade the vaccine skeptics in their lives through sharing their own personal experiences with the vaccine.
“It really comes down to finding people in the communities where there’s a tendency to have less vaccination, to find those individuals who did choose to get vaccinated and almost deputize them and encourage them to talk to their loved ones,” Sethi said.
With a new school year approaching, districts across the state are setting their own pandemic-related policies. Many districts’ school boards are grappling with the question of making mask-wearing optional or mandatory.
Sethi said he would support districts going even further and following the lead of California, which became the first state to require teachers and staff to get vaccinated.
“It’s a good idea,” Sethi said. “Simply because the vaccines are safe, they’re effective, and they’re part of our road to getting out of this mess that is the pandemic.”
Latest Push to Legalize
Sen. Melissa Agard (D-Madison) hopes the fifth time is the charm. Although her latest bill seeking to legalize both recreational and medicinal adult use of marijuana will almost certainly go nowhere in the GOP-controlled legislature, the Madison Democrat said she believes this latest effort is still advancing her cause.
“We know states and countries that have legalized cannabis have not had the bottom drop out,” Agard said. “And the perspective and values of people in Wisconsin and, in fact, the United States around the world are that, frankly, it’s more dangerous to have a prohibition than to move forward with policies to legalize cannabis for responsible adults usage.”
Agard noted her first bill in 2013 had five co-sponsors in the legislature while the bill introduced this week had more than 20. Agard, along with Rep. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) and Rep. David Bowen (D-Milwaukee), touted the bill at a dispensary just over the stateline in South Beloit. Supporter hope the tax dollars recreational marijuana generates in border states Illinois and Michigan will change more Republican minds.
“I very much believe, based on my conversations, that we do have a majority in both houses that would vote for full legalization,” Agard said. “Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in both houses has a different idea of how this policy should be moving forward.”
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said earlier this year there was not enough support among Senate Republicans to pass bill legalizing either recreational or medicinal marijuana in his chamber.
Gov. Tony Evers has included the legalization of marijuana in both the 2019 and 2021 executive budget proposals he presented. Both times, Republicans on the powerful Joint Finance Committee immediately stripped out that provision when rewriting the governor’s budget.
In the most recent statewide polling, a 2019 Marquette poll found nearly 60 percent favored legalizing marijuana for recreational use while more than 80 percent were in favor of legal medicinal use.
“How [LeMahieu] defined his message was he wanted his whole caucus to be supportive of this before they went forward,” Agard said. “At no point did I say the majority leader is lying. I just believe a majority of the votes is different than all of the votes.”
