Wisconsin Polls Show Strong Majority Oppose Walker

Many people have been talking about the national Rasmussen poll that shows more national voters side with Gov. Scott Walker. However, I've been reminding people that this is Wisconsin, not the nation. The local polls have shown consistent opposition to Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill. We're the people who brought you collective bargaining, and our opinions are the only ones that matter in this case. Now, Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight says he's skeptical of the Rasmussen poll because of the way in which the questions were asked. So it's clear we should focus more on results from local polling.

Two new local polls have been released since the Rasmussen poll that show strong opposition to Walker's plan in Wisconsin. These polls could be biased as well, but they are fairly consistent with previous local polls. There's a poll released on Monday from Madison public opinion analysts Forward Strategies, and another poll released today from the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. Both polls show that a strong majority oppose Gov. Scott Walker's plan to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

The poll commissioned by the state AFL-CIO shows that 52% of Wisconsinites oppose Walker's plan to eliminate people's rights, with 42% supporting the plan. These results are consistent with the majority of local polls I've seen before. We should remember that Walker was elected with 52% of the vote. It's clear, even though Walker says no one should be surprised by his plan, many of us, myself included, are surprised.

The WisPolitics Budget Blog has a good summary of the entire poll with links to the actual poll.

The Forward Strategies poll targeted key Republican Senate districts instead of the entire state. The poll found that over two-thirds of Wisconsinites in those districts think Walker should compromise before stripping public employees of their bargaining rights. This is well outside any margin of error, which was 4.89%, though it was a very small sample with only 400 voters questioned.

The Senate districts that the Forward Strategies poll targeted were:

Rob Cowles, Green Bay
Randy Hopper, Fond du Lac
Dan Kapanke, La Crosse
Luther Olsen, Ripon
Dale Schultz, Richland Center
Sheila Harsdorf, River Falls
Terry Moulton, Chippewa Falls

Tell your Senator how you feel if you are in one of these districts, or anywhere in Wisconsin for that matter.