Wisconsin Polling Shows Signs of Trouble for Trump Campaign

All the way back in 2016, (which feels now like it was about a century ago), one of the biggest surprises of the presidential election came from the more rural parts of The Cheese State.

It was during that election that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton all but ignored the smaller towns and cities in Wisconsin, likely believing that her campaign has already clinched victory there and beyond.

At the same time, the Trump campaign was being besieged with criticism for their somewhat unorthodox focus on the state’s smaller communities.  Some in the mainstream media wondered aloud if this was simply a case of the business mogul’s political naïveté on full display.

In the end, Trump got what he needed from Wisconsin and shocked Hillary Clinton by besting her in the election itself.  The former Secretary of State hadn’t even written a concession speech.

But, if the polls are to be believed, President Trump will have to do a whole lot of work in Wisconsin in the next 6 days.

A surge in coronavirus cases has damaged President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in Wisconsin, with growing criticism of his work on the pandemic and preference for former Vice President Joe Biden to handle it. Biden holds a slighter advantage in Michigan, with sizable leads among women, moderates and independents in ABC News/Washington Post polls in both states.

Biden leads Trump by 57-40% among likely voters in Wisconsin, a state that’s now reported to be third in the nation in per capita COVID-19 cases, with a 53% increase in average daily cases in the past two weeks, a record number of hospitalizations and a 112% jump in deaths. That compares with a closer 52-46% in mid-September.

In Michigan, it’s 51-44%, Biden-Trump, among likely voters, a slight Biden lead in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. The Senate race there stands at 52% for incumbent Democrat Gary Peters versus 46% for Republican John James, not a statistically significant difference, thus a rare chance this cycle for a GOP pickup, with control of the Senate in the balance.

Of course, it must be remembered that pollsters in 2016 were wildly wrong nearly across the board – a lesson that the Democratic Party has worked hard to teach to their constituents these past few weeks.