Democratic socialist Francesca Hong was heavily favored to win the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor on Aug. 11, but the few polls taken proved unreliable. Instead, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly claimed victory.
That unreliability came in part because the polling was done in the midst of several major last-minute developments that changed the race, said Charles Franklin, who conducts the Marquette University Law School poll.
"When you have as chaotic a final month of a campaign as we've had here, it's hardly surprising that things can change. And they changed a lot," Franklin said.
In the weeks after the polls were released, Hong was publicly ridiculed for past social media comments that called for ending Thanksgiving,
criticized Valentine's Day and described an experience at a Culver's that made her uncomfortable because of "many old white people who didn't think we spoke english."
Crowley suspended his campaign July 8. But he reentered the race 10 days later with the endorsement of Gov. Tony Evers, a fellow Democrat. The two argued that Hong could not beat Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in the general election, partly because of her social media posts.
The support from Evers, whose popularity among Democrats was above 85% in recent Marquette polls, could have factored in Crowley's win. The withdrawal of other major candidates could also have affected the outcome.
Crowley appears to have won by about 3,000 votes in a primary that saw unprecedented turnout of about 800,000 voters, Franklin said. Final vote counts could change.
"You could point to almost anything that happened in the last two weeks of the campaign and credibly say that was really important," Franklin said.
Republicans jeered over the polling gap.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and consultant, jokingly called for “a total and complete shutdown of primary polling in the Midwestern United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on” in an early-morning social media post August 12.
The polls
Two July polls showed Hong with a large lead over the other candidates but also showed the majority of Democratic voters were undecided.
In a Marquette Law School poll conducted by phone July 8-16, while Crowley was out of the race, Hong led with 26% support. She was followed by Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor, with 15%, and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who dropped out of the race on July 17, with 11%. Crowley was not included in the poll because he had suspended his campaign.
A significant share of voters were undecided – 45%.
In second phone survey taken by Marquette Law School just after Crowley reentered the race in mid-July, 38% of respondents said they favored Hong. Barnes was in second place at 16%. Crowley had just 7% of the vote.
Notably, 34% of survey respondents remained undecided.
Barnes dropped out after that survey was released.
A State Navigate poll taken Aug. 3-6, once the field was finalized, found that among 1,473 likely Democratic primary voters, Hong led with 44%, followed by Crowley with 22% and Wisconsin state Sen. Kelda Roys with 11%. That poll was conducted by text message and online.
Undecideds moved together
The final Marquette poll nearly matched Hong's support, Franklin said. That suggests that "we did a good job of capturing Hong's actual support. But that actual support turned out to be basically her ceiling. And so she didn't add anything to that support in those last two weeks."
What was unexpected was that nearly all undecided voters went for Crowley, he said. Normally, undecided voters splinter among the candidates, he said. He added that many probably saw that Hong held a strong lead, perhaps without understanding that so many people were undecided, and assumed that meant she would win.
"What the average person sees is, of course, just the top lines of, 'Oh, look, this candidate is ahead by 10 points or 20 points' or whatever it is," he said.
The primary campaign was quiet for most of the year, and when it started to heat up over the summer and candidates began dropping out, undecided voters were waiting for a sign of who the main alternative to Hong would be, said University of Wisconsin-Madison Political Science Professor Barry Burden. Evers' endorsement may have given them direction, said Burden, who also directs UW-Madison's Elections Research Center.
"He had vowed initially to stay out of the race, but when he jumped in, it was a sign something was happening. And I think voters paid attention to that. He was very active on the campaign trail and gave a full-throated endorsement to Crowley. That was meaningful," Burden said.
He was also surprised about Hong's social media comments drawing criticism. Republicans seemed excited about having her as an opponent in the fall, but jumped on the comments anyway.
"The tweets were sitting there for months and not made very visible," he said. "I don't know why conservative outlets would be giving more attention to those late in the campaign. I can see why other Democrats might have done that to signal that she has an electability problem, but from Republicans – they may have hurt themselves."
Did polls assume more young people would show?
The polls also appeared to have oversampled young voters and made assumptions about where voters would turn out in large numbers that didn't match what happened on Election Day, said Democratic pollster Fred Hicks.
Turnout in Milwaukee was 2% higher than anticipated, and Crowley did better than expected in Dane County and the rest of the state, Hicks said.
In contrast, Franklin said he thinks older voters, especially those over 60, were especially undecided in the final poll and the least likely to support Hong. That is a group much more likely to cast a ballot, he said.
"We did say at the time of the release that this is a reservoir of potential support for someone other than Hong. But there was nothing in the data at that time to point to that older group all moving towards one – and only one – candidate," he said.
The Marquette poll is "the Gold Standard" of polling in Wisconsin, Burden said.
"I don't think there were mistakes. It's a difficult thing to do to poll in a primary when voters are becoming aware of the candidates so rapidly and making decisions near the very end," he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What did the polls get wrong in the Wisconsin governor's race?
