{"id":9022,"date":"2026-08-12T19:41:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T19:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=9022"},"modified":"2026-08-12T19:41:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T19:41:31","slug":"wisconsin-surprise-raises-big-questions-about-polls-and-democratic-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=9022","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin surprise raises big questions about polls and Democratic voters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
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Before election night, polls showed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, leading her more mainstream opponent. (Nam Y. Huh\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Francesca Hong\u2019s upset loss in Wisconsin\u2019s Democratic gubernatorial primary marks the second straight week that a progressive Democrat\u2019s double-digit polling lead evaporated on election night.<\/p>

Read more How mainstream Democrats pulled off a big upset against a democratic socialist<\/a><\/p>\n

Hong, a state representative and democratic socialist, led a scattered field by between 18 and 36 percentage points in polls<\/a> over the past few weeks. She lost Tuesday\u2019s primary<\/a> to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by 0.5 percentage points.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin\u2019s surprise comes one week after Michigan progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won<\/a> the state\u2019s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate after leading by 13 points in polls over the past month.<\/p>\n

Together, the results raise questions about polls\u2019 ability to gauge support for progressive candidates as well as Democratic voters\u2019 resistance to nominating strongly liberal candidates in battleground states.<\/p>\n

Several factors appear to have combined to lead polls far astray in the Wisconsin race.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n
Hong supporters wait for election results at a watch party in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night. (Nam Y. Huh\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

The race itself was highly confusing. Crowley, the eventual winner, dropped out of the contest in early July. He jumped back in after Sara Rodriguez, the state\u2019s lieutenant governor, quit the race. Then in late July, a third major candidate, Mandela Barnes, a former lieutenant governor, also dropped out. The state\u2019s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, endorsed Crowley and barnstormed the state with him.<\/p>\n

Seven polls in Wisconsin measured primary support in the campaign\u2019s final three weeks, but only two were conducted after Barnes dropped out on July 30. Those found Hong with 42 to 44 percent support, with 22 to 24 percent supporting Crowley, and 18 to 22 percent supporting other candidates or undecided.<\/p>\n

Hong won 39.3 percent of the vote, according to Associated Press tallies as of 1 p.m. Wednesday \u2014 underperforming polls by three to five points \u2014 while Crowley won 39.8 percent, about twice as much as polls had estimated.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne candidate\u2019s voters wanted to answer polls.\u201d That was the conclusion of Chaz Nuttycombe, whose bipartisan group, State Navigate, conducted two polls in the final weeks.<\/p>\n

After El-Sayed\u2019s underperformance in Michigan, Nuttycombe wrote on X<\/a> that the group \u201cmade our weights much, much more favorable to Crowley, and still couldn\u2019t find him in the lead. Neither could his internal pollster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically, in its final poll<\/a> State Navigate down-weighted younger voters, a group that was heavily supportive of Hong but that also tends to turn out at lower rates in primaries.<\/p>\n

Nuttycombe suggested that a pernicious dynamic may have been at play, one pollsters refer to as nonresponse bias. If Hong\u2019s supporters were more likely to answer polls regardless of their age or other demographics, then adjusting the demographic makeup of the sample would fail.<\/p>

Read more Minnesota is first state to set all-female matchups for the biggest races<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no real data on the ideological breakdowns of the previous DEM primary electorates here, which you really need it seems just as you need party weights\u201d in a general election, Nuttycombe wrote.<\/p>\n

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Voting Tuesday in Madison. (Scott Olson\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, which finished its final survey<\/a> before Barnes dropped out, noted in a text message to The Washington Post that the poll was fairly accurate in gauging Hong\u2019s support but didn\u2019t anticipate voters uniting around an opponent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had Hong at 38 percent, she\u2019s at 39.55 percent. And 34 percent undecided [in the poll]. Pretty clear that Crowley + Barnes drop out + Evers endorsement moved the vast majority of undecided to Crowley,\u201d Franklin wrote. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would coalesce around one candidate that strongly in just three weeks, but it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChaos in the race with 3 dropouts in July plus a reentry and endorsement. No wonder people decided late.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final polls showed ingredients for a late swing: State Navigate\u2019s poll after Barnes dropped out found that 9 percent of likely voters were undecided and an additional 6 percent supported candidates who had dropped out of the race, including some voters who had already cast their ballots. And Marquette\u2019s last poll<\/a> found that 67 percent of Democratic voters said they had not heard enough about Crowley to judge him favorably or unfavorably.<\/p>\n

Strategic voting is another potential factor in late swings, as primary voters weigh what they like about each candidate along with their perceived chances of winning in a general election in a closely divided state like Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Hong\u2019s electability came into question in the campaign\u2019s closing days because of her identification as a democratic socialist, as well as problematic statements she had made in the past that voters may have seen as extreme, including that Thanksgiving should be canceled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The past week\u2019s primaries point to patterns new and old in poll accuracy and understanding what motivates voters. Primary polls have always <\/b>been volatile and have never been precise, because voters can tune in late and need to choose between multiple candidates with similar views. Wisconsin and Michigan have also been particularly tough states for pollsters<\/a> in general elections<\/p>\n

Hong\u2019s loss and El-Sayed\u2019s narrow win suggest that supporters of strong progressive candidates are a passionate minority of the Democratic Party and that this enthusiasm may lead them to be overrepresented in polls. The elections also suggest many Democrats doubt that strong liberal candidates can win general elections \u2014 or simply prefer a moderate candidate.<\/p>\n

Pollsters will need to get a better handle on these dynamics to understand support for the Democratic presidential candidates in 2028 and may also need to conduct surveys in the final days before primaries to capture late shifts.<\/p>\n

As State Navigate\u2019s Nuttycombe noted, some of those problems are less acute in general elections, where pollsters have more tools to ensure that samples are politically representative, including statewide estimates for partisanship and past presidential voting. Yet the Wisconsin and Michigan primaries are a reminder that in an era of low response rates, obtaining representative samples and accurately identifying likely voters continue to be difficult tasks.<\/p>

Read more Stefon Diggs, joining Commanders, says he\u2019s ready to \u2018put on for my city\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surveys had showed Francesca Hong with a significant lead in the Democratic primary for governor. Then she lost. What did the polls get wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nWisconsin surprise raises big questions about polls and Democratic voters - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=9022\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wisconsin surprise raises big questions about polls and Democratic voters - Moving Insider USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Surveys had showed Francesca Hong with a significant lead in the Democratic primary for governor. 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