State is less divided over its current governor than its last one
It has been a hallmark of this polarized era in Wisconsin politics that major political figures get almost no support from voters in the other party.
President Donald Trump’s approval among Democrats in Wisconsin? 5%.
Former President Barack Obama’s approval among Republicans? 8%.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s positive rating among Democrats? 10%.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s positive rating among Republicans? 8%.
Former Gov. Scott Walker’s approval among Democrats? 11%.
But Wisconsin’s first-term governor, Democrat Tony Evers, continues to be a big exception to this pattern. His overall approval in the latest Marquette Law School poll is 59% — the result of skyhigh ratings among Democrats, good ratings among independents and notso-terrible ratings among Republicans.
More than a quarter (27%) of Republican voters approve of the governor’s job performance, and more than a third (35%) approve of his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
“Getting over 20% of the other party
is high praise these days,” said Marquette pollster Charles Franklin.
Evers’ job ratings aren’t exceptional by national standards. The political standing of most governors has gone up in the pandemic, in some cases quite dramatically. And many of those governors are getting broader approval across party lines than Evers.
But “crossover” support is an alien phenomenon in recent Wisconsin history, which has been marked by extreme partisan divisions and voters’ almost uniform rejection of the other party’s political leaders.
“If you grade Evers on the Wisconsin polarization curve, he’s doing pretty well,” said political scientist Ken Goldstein.
In other words, the governor’s ratings are quite positive when you take into account the deep partisan divisions in this state in recent years. But Evers’ numbers don’t really stand out when compared to governors right now in other states.
“If you compare him to governors in the rest of the country … a lot of evidence suggests he’s in the lower quarter,” said Goldstein, a professor with the University of San Francisco who polls regularly nationally.
Put another way, Wisconsin is much less divided over its current governor than it was over its previous one — Walker.
But it still appears more divided than most other states.
Here is a closer look at what the polling tells us about Evers’ political standing in Wisconsin almost halfway through his second year in office:
Evers is no Scott Walker. Evers has a very different polling profile than his GOP predecessor, who was defined early in his eight-year tenure by his abrupt move to weaken public-sector unions. That led to mass protests and recall fights and made Walker a “love-himor-hate-him” political figure.
Walker was very popular among GOP voters, but his overwhelming unpopularity among Democrats helped ensure that his job ratings rarely crept past 50%. For his final seven years in office, his average approval rating was 46% and his disapproval rating was 49% in the Marquette polling (which started in 2012 so doesn’t cover Walker’s stormy first year). Walker’s approval among registered voters never exceeded 52% in any one of 50 Marquette surveys.
Compare that to Evers, who in 10 polls since he took office has averaged 52% approval and 36% disapproval. Evers’ average approval rating is equal to Walker’s highest-ever approval rating.
Walker’s net approval (the percentage who approve minus the percentage who disapprove) never exceeded “plus 8” and dipped as low as “minus 22.” Evers’ net approval has never been below “plus 5” (last November), rose as high as “plus 36” (March) and is currently “plus 26.”
Voters are less divided along party lines over Evers than they were over Walker, who averaged 88% approval among Republicans and 11% approval among Democrats. Evers has averaged 85% approval among Democrats and 20% approval among Republicans.
There was also more intensity to the public’s views of Walker. At the end of his tenure, more than 70% either “strongly” approved or “strongly” disapproved of his performance (the rest had milder opinions). But fewer than half of voters have “strong” opinions about Evers.
The pandemic factor. One reason Evers’ ratings are relatively high today is his handling of the pandemic.
Voters were supportive of his stay-at-home order, an extension of which was struck down by the state Supreme Court last week.
The governor’s overall approval rose from 51% in February, before the pandemic hit, to 65% in March and is now at 59% in May. His approval for handling coronavirus is currently 64%.
Most governors in the country have seen their job ratings go up as voters reacted positively to their actions and decisions in the crisis. Most are getting far higher ratings than Trump for handling the pandemic.
In the Marquette poll released last week, Evers had positive approval ratings from men and women, voters in all age groups, and voters in all regions of the state.
One in four Republicans said they trusted the governor (a Democrat) more than the Legislature (led by Republicans) to handle Wisconsin’s “reopening.”
But the pandemic is not the only explanation for the contrast between Evers’ numbers and Walker’s numbers. Even before the crisis, Evers had lower negatives than Walker. Evers’ average job rating in six polls from August 2019 to February 2020 was 51% approval and 39% disapproval. His average approval rating by party was 85% among Democrats, 52% among independents and 18% among Republicans.
An approval rating of 18% among the other party’s voters may not seem like much.
But in Wisconsin, most well-known politicians — from Obama to Walker to Johnson and Baldwin — have had positive ratings of around 10% from the opposing party. Trump has averaged 5% approval from Democrats in the state.
So what other factors help explain why Evers has so far been more popular and less polarizing than Walker?
One could simply be positive perceptions of his policies and leadership.
Others could include a personality (low-key) and nonpartisan background (as an educator) that make him less of a partisan lightning rod.
It’s also possible that because Wisconsin’s divided government and GOP-controlled Legislature has limited his ability to enact a Democratic agenda, Republican voters have less reason to dislike him than they would otherwise.
“In a peculiar way, the division between the Legislature and the governor has meant that fewer of Evers’ policy priorities have been put in place, and there haven’t even been pitched battles over them,” said Marquette pollster Franklin, who also cited Evers’ style.
“Tony Evers’ persona is a much more mild-mannered political one that doesn’t ignite the partisan fires to the same extent as not just Walker, but most elected officials who come from purely partisan backgrounds,” he said.
Other governors. It’s hard to systematically compare Evers’ job ratings to those of other governors because there is not a lot of good polling data in most states. But the polling that’s out there suggests many governors have ratings as higher or higher than Evers and are drawing even more support from voters in the opposing party.
A 50-state polling study on COVID-19 last month by Harvard, Rutgers and Northeastern universities asked voters in all states if they approved or disapproved of the way their own governor was handling the outbreak.
The highest-rated governor was Republican Mike DeWine of Ohio: 83% approved and only 5% disapproved of the job he was doing with respect to the pandemic. Others in the top 10 included Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (a Republican) and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (a Democrat). The lowest-rated governors included Hawaii’s, Florida’s, South Dakota’s and Iowa’s.
But no governor had a negative rating on handling the coronavirus and almost all had much higher ratings than the president. While quite positive, Evers’ rating of 58% approval and 20% disapproval actually ranked in the bottom quarter of all states in the poll, suggesting voters in Wisconsin were more divided over their governor’s handling of the crisis than those in most other states.
“Polarization is partly in ‘we the voters,’ we the public who feel intensity for our side and especially
against the other side,” said Franklin.
Polls suggests those partisan divisions haven’t necessarily diminished in Wisconsin since Walker was governor.
But they also suggest Evers doesn’t activate them to the same degree that Walker and other major political figures have in recent years.
Craig Gilbert has covered every presidential campaign since 1988 and chronicled Wisconsin’s role as a swing state at the center of the nation’s political divide. He has written widely about polarization and voting trends and won distinction for his data-driven analysis. Gilbert has served as a writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Lubar Fellow at Marquette Law School and a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he studied public opinion, survey research, voting behavior and statistics. Email him at craig.gilbert@jrn.com and follow him on Twitter: @WisVoter.