» Clarke poll:
Re-election would be an extremely tall order for Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., according to a new poll by a Democratic-leaning firm.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. had better hope he lands a job in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Because re-election would be an extremely tall order for the toughtalking, Stetson-wearing lawman, according to a new poll by a Democratic-leaning firm.
The survey by Public Policy Polling found that only 31% of Milwaukee County voters approved of the job Clarke is doing while 62% disapproved. Nearly two-thirds of local voters told the pollster they believed he has had a negative impact on Milwaukee County’s image nationally.
Clarke’s numbers were even worse among Democrats.
Only 13% of likely Democratic primary voters in Milwaukee County said they would back Clarke, compared with 82% who said they would not.
Clarke, who has been elected four times, defeated Milwaukee Lt. Chris Moews in the 2014 Democratic primary by 52% to 48%. Clarke runs as a Democrat but aligns with, raises money for and backs Republicans.
“I was definitely surprised that the numbers were quite as bad as they were,” Tom Jensen, director of PPP, said in an interview. “I can’t think of a whole lot of times we’ve polled on an incumbent officeholder and seen 82% of voters in their party say they want to vote them out.”
Clarke did not respond to requests for comment.
This drop in the sheriff’s local support comes as his profile has soared nationally. Clarke is a frequent guest on Fox News and now has more than 500,000 Twitter followers. A frequent surrogate for the first-term Republican president during the 2016 election, Clarke is said to be still in the running for an appointed position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or another federal agency.
The pollster interviewed 1,260 Milwaukee County voters, including 722 Democratic primary voters, from Friday through Sunday. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points overall and 3.7 points for the Democratic primary sample.
Clarke, who is African-American, did poorly among both white and black voters. A third of white voters in Milwaukee County approved of the job the sheriff is doing. But his approval rating stands at only 22% among black voters in Milwaukee County.
Republicans in Milwaukee County were the only group to give Clarke a thumb’s up
They gave the sheriff a 72% approval rating, the poll shows. But it is incredibly hard for Republican candidates to win in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County.
Several Democrats are already lining up to challenge Clarke in 2018, including Moews and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge John Siefert, and Clarke critics have launched a Facebook page to find someone to oppose the sheriff.
Jensen said no one paid PPP to conduct the survey. He said he was interested in seeing what Clarke’s approval rating was on his home turf now that the sheriff has “abandoned any pretense of being a Democrat, especially in the last year.”
“I didn’t think he’d have a lot of margin of error, but I definitely didn’t expect (this),” Jensen said Tuesday.
Dean Debnam, president of PPP, added in a news release announcing the results: “Democratic voters are open to replacing him with just about anyone at this point.”
Not surprisingly, the numbers were also bad for Trump and Gov. Scott Walker.
Both Republican officeholders received a 30% approval rating from Milwaukee County voters, but Walker had a slightly greater disapproval number than the president. Against a generic Democratic opponent, Walker trailed by 64% to 29%.
In 2014, Walker lost Milwaukee County to Democratic challenger Mary Burke by 27 percentage points while winning overall by 5 points. Trump, meanwhile, lost to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by 37 points in Milwaukee County in November, but Trump became the first Republican since 1984 to win Wisconsin.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat, was the only politician to do well in the PPP survey. She had an approval rating topping 50%, while a third of the Milwaukee County voters disapproved of her job performance.