WASHINGTON — A new Marquette Law School poll shows a dead heat in Wisconsin between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The poll found Biden and Trump each receiving 49% among registered voters. Biden led 50% to 48% in Marquette’s November poll. Both results were within the poll’s margin of error.
“Biden’s job approval rating is only 41 percent,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “You would think he would be getting crushed in a presidential election. But in fact, he’s tied at 49 [percent]. And a lot of that is because the Biden weaknesses, which are very real, are counterbalanced by Trump’s own weaknesses of people who see him as corrupt or believe that he’s engaged in illegal activities.”
But the new poll shows Biden in a far weaker position against former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. She’s supported by 57% of registered voters, compared to 41% for Biden.
“I’m not again predicting a 16-point margin if Haley were to win the nomination, but it really does show us how much a different Republican could gain due to dissatisfaction with Biden,” Franklin said while presenting the poll results Wednesday.
In a five-way race with third-party candidates including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump would receive 40% to Biden’s 37%, and 16% for Kennedy.
“There’s a lot of dissatisfaction,” Franklin said. “We found 18 percent have an unfavorable view of both Trump and Biden. So that’s a lot of voters out there that don’t like those two options and are looking around, or at the very least expressing their dissatisfaction with Trump and Biden, by looking at and saying, ‘Maybe I’ll vote for one of these third-party candidates.’”
The poll also shows, in a race between Biden and Trump, Trump polls better in his handling of immigration, the economy, foreign relations and the Israel-Hamas war. Voters favor Biden over Trump on Medicare, Social Security and abortion rights.
Pollsters interviewed 930 Wisconsin voters between Jan. 24 through 31. The margin of error is +/- 4.2 percentage points.
Read the full results of the poll, here.