Ron Johnson sees advantages over Barnes in new Wisconsin poll

A new poll essentially illuminates two paths forward for Mandela Barnes

A new poll of the two races to watch in Wisconsin reveals a serious problem for Democrats, particularly Senate candidate Mandela Barnes.

The CBS News/YouGov poll was released on Sunday. Analyzing the Wisconsin Senate and governor’s races, the poll found both races deadlocked: Mr Barnes trails incumbent Sen Ron Johnson by just one percentage point, while Gov Tony Evers, a Democrat, is tied with his GOP opponent Tim Michels.

Normally, any challenger hoping to unseat an incumbent senator would love to see a poll that showed them within one point of their opponent. But digging deeper, there’s a clear issue that could play out on election day.

Mr Barnes trails his GOP opponent by huge margins on two key issues: The economy and crime, both of which are consistently rated in voters’ top concerns when they go to the polls. He leads Mr Johnson significantly among voters who named abortion rights as one of their top issues, but that is likely a smaller number of votes. Mr Barnes’s stance on abortion rights was the top reason most of his supporters gave for supporting him, while reasons including support for his economic policies and views on crime trailed far behind.

In general, there’s also an enthusiasm gap between Mr Johnson and his challenger. Just 49 per cent of Mr Barnes’s voters said they were very enthusiastic about his candidacy, compared to 59 per cent of Mr Johnson’s voters who said the same about the senator. The number of Barnes voters who said they were supporting their candidate mainly to oppose the incumbent was more than double the number who gave a similar reason for supporting Mr Johnson.

The poll essentially illuminates two paths forward for Mr Barnes: He can attempt to expand his appeal among voters concerned about the economy and issues of law enforcement, or instead seek to expand the number of voters who see his support for abortion as a reason to oust the incumbent.

One bright spot for the Democrat in the poll came in terms of favorability rankings for the two candidates: Mr Johnson’s favorability rating is lower than his opponent’s and his unfavorable rating is higher, likely a result of continued coverage of Mr Johnson’s role in a scheme to toss out Wisconsin’s 2020 election results on January 6.

The CBS poll surveyed 1,285 registered voters in Wisconsin between 3-7 October; the margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.