New polling from Swing Voter Pilot in Minnesota and Wisconsin offers a look at a group that will be critical to determining who wins in November: voters who aren't firmly locked into either party.
The two studies, conducted after the Minnesota Senate Farmfest forum and Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial debate, respectively, puts numbers behind the understanding that the general electorate is more idiosyncratic than its primary counterpart.
In Wisconsin, the Democratic candidates currently leading the primary conversation did not perform best with swing voters. Francesca Hong and David Crowley led Republican Tom Tiffany in head-to-head matchups, but posted the weakest results among the five Democrats tested: Hong received 57% and Crowley 62%, compared with 73% for Kelda Roys and 72% for Joel Brennan.
At the same time, Hong’s top marks come on issues that resonate most across the board – and outpace her top rival, Crowley, on almost every issue, which speaks to the intensity of support she already has and suggests room to grow.
In Minnesota, swing voters similarly showed a distinct preference from the conventional primary narrative. Angie Craig led Peggy Flanagan 60%-40% among Democratic candidates, while Michele Tafoya led Royce White 67%-33% among Republicans. More importantly for November, both Democrats performed substantially better than either Republican when tested against the opposing party: Craig received 62% and Flanagan 58%, compared with 44% for Tafoya and 36% for White.
Flanagan did better than Hong and actually showed big improvements with swing voters after her debate – a very clear measure of her ability to grow her support if she wins the nomination and voters of all stripes get to see and hear more from her.
Taken together, the polling both raises and goes some way in answering questions worth watching as these races move toward November: Are the candidates winning over primary voters the same candidates who can win over the voters who will ultimately decide the general election?
Swing Voter Pilot measures that question directly, testing candidates with swing voters before and after debates and forums and capturing not just horse-race preference, but electability, issue appeal, candidate image, and head-to-head performance. If electability is part of your story, these numbers can put hard figures behind it.