New poll shows Sanders, Cruz hold slight leads.
Candidates set events through weekend
Madison — For the second day in a row, a new poll shows Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz with the narrowest of edges over Donald Trump in the fiercely contested Wisconsin presidential primaries.
The new survey by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, is similar in many respects to results released Wednesday by the Marquette University Law School poll.
The Public Policy poll shows Sanders, the Vermont senator, leading Clinton, the former secretary of state, 49% to 43% with 8% of voters undecided. That compares to Wednesday’s Marquette poll that showed Sanders leading 49% to 45%.
On the Republican side, the PPP poll showed Cruz, the Texas senator, was at 38%, with 37% for Trump, the real estate billionaire, and 17% for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The Marquette poll had Cruz leading with 40%, followed by Trump at 30% and Kasich at 21%.
On Monday and Tuesday, Public Policy polled 768 likely Republican primary voters and 720 likely Democratic primary voters, yielding a margin of error for both sets of results of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The survey was paid for by VoteVets Action Fund, a liberal group focused on veterans and other issues.
With the outcome in play for both parties’ Tuesday primaries and no other states scheduled to vote that day, the candidates are campaigning all across Wisconsin.
Former President Bill Clinton will be in Appleton on Friday, and both Hillary Clinton and Sanders will be in Milwaukee on Saturday. Sanders is campaigning in Sheboygan and Green Bay on Friday, Eau Claire on Saturday and Madison on Sunday.
Trump will have events in Rothschild and Eau Claire on Saturday, a town hall in Milwaukee on Sunday and will be in La Crosse on Monday. Kasich will be in Janesville and Burlington on Saturday.
Cruz and Kasich are also among the scheduled speakers at Friday night’s sold out Milwaukee County Republican Party Dinner at Serb Hall. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Trump backer and the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, is also scheduled to speak, as is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who made a high-profile endorsement of Cruz on Tuesday.
The Cruz campaign released an ad Thursday featuring Walker, who uses his preferred style of speaking directly to the camera.
“Ted is a constitutional conservative. He’ll challenge the status quo just like we’ve done in Wisconsin,” Walker says in the spot.
Trump, for his part, met with Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on Thursday, tweeting that he was “looking forward to bringing the party together.”
Other Republicans were hoping for a very different outcome. Katie Packer, chairwoman of the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC, said Thursday that without a win in Wisconsin Trump couldn’t win the required 1,237 delegates to clinch the GOP nomination.
“The math just isn’t there,” Packer said.
David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, agreed. The club has spent about $1 million on ads in Wisconsin to support Cruz and attack Trump as a false conservative.
“I think Wisconsin is likely to become, and be seen as, a pivotal point in this primary season,” McIntosh said.
Speaking to conservative radio host Charlie Sykes of WTMJ-AM (620), Cruz said he was confident he could win the GOP nomination.
He said he was concerned Trump would revolt if that happened but discounted the possibility of a third-party run by Trump, saying a number of states have “sore loser” laws that prevent those who lose a primary from running as an independent. Wisconsin isn’t one of those states, so Trump could potentially pursue getting on the ballot here if he wanted.
Also Thursday, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) worked the room on behalf of Clinton at Gee’s Clippers on Milwaukee’s north side. Booker was in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Racine on a whirlwind campaign sprint ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary.
African-American voters form a key part of Clinton’s coalition as she battles Sanders for the Democratic nomination.
“Hillary has been doing incredibly well within the African-American community around the country,” Booker said. “I think it’s because people know her, they trust her. They’ve seen her highs and her lows and how resilient she is in her lows, how she gets back up, the kind of grit and determination she has.”
In Janesville on Thursday, Police Chief David Moore said police had learned more about an incident in which a 15-year-old female protester was pepper-sprayed in the face by a man Tuesday outside a rally for Trump after she had punched a different man.
On Tuesday, police said the victim alleged she had been groped, provoking her punch, but on Thursday Moore said that wasn’t the case. The teenager is being referred for potential disorderly conduct charges, and police said they are still searching for the man who sprayed her.
PAtrick mArley in mAdison And Bill GlAuber in milwAukee contributed to this report.