A short take on the 47-47 Marquette poll

My quick reaction on the Marquette Law School Poll showing Mary Burke back to even among "likely voters"? Don't wanna say I told you so, but I told you so. All Charles Franklin had to do was to fix the sample into something resembling reality and Burke “caught up.”

Oct. 1 likely voter poll sample with leaners- GOP +4.6%
Oct. 1 result- Walker +5.8%

Oct. 15 likely voter poll sample with leaners- Dem +1.5%
Oct. 15 result- Tied

May I remind you that the turnout was Dem +1 for party ID in Wisconsin for the 2010 elections, which was a GOP wave year that Dems weren’t very fired up for. The Journal-Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert pointed this out in the wake of the poll's release.

note about Marq poll showing Walker-Burke tie. this sample more in line with long-term WIS pattern (slightly more Ds than Rs) than last poll

— Craig Gilbert (@WisVoter) October 15, 2014

Bottom line- Walker never had a 5-point lead in reality, it's stayed a close race- although I worry that the outlier poll blunted some Burke momentum among low-info people who like to say they're voting for the "winner." Now, that situation doesn;t exist, and it'll likely come down to a couple of events over the next 2 weeks and to turnout.

Which means if the turnout becomes closer to presidential levels of Dem +4-6 on November 4, Mary Burke will win this thing. Of course, if Scott Walker keeps coming up with word salad answers to things like Medicaid and saying Fantasyland things like the minimum wage doesn’t “serve a purpose”, she might not even need that type of turnout to become our next Governor.

But even if Walker keeps making an idiot out of himself, let’s run up the score to keep the “262 election clerk” factor from coming into play, and snag the Senate and a sizable part of Robbin' Vos majority in the Assembly, shall we?

I'll have more on the budget report later on (got my normal life to get back to).