by Tony Petrangelo

Jun 1, 2012, 8:00 AM

More Wisconsin recall polls, only five days till election

With time running short in the Wisconsin recall election, the polls have begun to ever so slightly shift in Tom Barrett’s direction, the caveat to this, is that most of the recent polls to have come out have been released by groups supporting Tom Barrett.

The public polls that have been released don’t paint the same picture though, instead indicating a roughly 5 point lead for Scott Walker. First let’s take a look at the most recent polls, starting with one commissioned by the Greater Wisconsin Committee:

Lake Research (5/30, no trend lines):

Scott Walker (R-inc) 49
Tom Barrett (D) 49
Undecided 2
(MoE: ±4%)

This has been the only poll that has come out since the primary that has shown Barrett not losing. And while it is an internal poll that internals that Dems were releasing last week showed Barrett losing by a couple, so this represents some tightening.

If you think the race is tightening though, the Marquette Law Schools third look at the race this month throws some cold water on that:

Marquette Law School (5/16 in parenthesis, 5/2 in brackets):

Scott Walker (R-inc) 52 (50) [48]
Tom Barrett (D) 45 (44) [47]
Undecided 3 (3) [3]
(MoE: ±4.1%)

This poll from the Marquette Law School shows the opposite if you look at it’s trend lines. Walker is up four points since their first poll at the beginning of the month and Barrett is down a couple.

At the same time, it could just be float within the margin of error that will happen with different samples.

Another internal that got released was this one, sponsored by the DGA:

The Mellman Group (5/25, 5/18 in parenthesis):

Scott Walker (R-inc) 49 (50)
Tom Barrett (D) 46 (44)
Undecided 5 (5)
(MoE: ±4%)

The trend lines in this poll are completely different than in the Marquette Law School poll. Where Marquette’s poll has seen Walker pick of six points over Barrett during May, this Mellman poll shows Barrett closing the gap by four points.

Another poll that came out was one from Garin-Hart-Yang that appears to be the last day of surveys addition to the the poll they released on the 24th.

I say this because that poll was in the field from the 22nd-23rd, while this latest one goes from the 22nd-24th. The first one was 635 likely votes, this one is 935 likely voters.

So I’m going to just treat this like one poll that was released over two days and leave it at that.

Garin-Hart-Yang (5/25, no trend lines):

Scott Walker (R-inc) 50
Tom Barrett (D) 49
Undecided 2
(MoE: ±3.3%)

The great thing about the article linked in the above poll, look at those significant digits!

In a survey of 935 likely recall voters, conducted by the Garin Hart Yang Research Group from May 22 to 24, Walker led Barrett by 49.89 to 48.62 percent. With the poll’s margin of error at plus or minus 3.3 percent, that means the race is essentially tied.

Because when you have a poll with a margin of error of 3.3%, knowing that Scott Walker actually has 49.89% as opposed to 50% and Tom Barrett has 48.62% instead of 49% is oh so important. But making fun of HuffPo isn’t really the point of this post now is it.

Some people have found it a little curious that Republicans haven’t released any of their own internals. Could it be that their polling is showing the same thing as the Democrats polling, a tightening race?

It’s certainly possible, but I think the obvious reason they haven’t released anything is that every publicly released poll so far has shown Walker in the lead, so what do they need to release anything for.

If they want to rebut any of the Dem internals that have come out they simply need to point at one of the many public polls that show Walker with a healthy single digit lead.

If you want to help you can contribute to, or volunteer for Tom Barrett.