Wisconsinites are heading to the polls today to vote in their state’s primary elections, and the biggest ballot item is the final showdown in what has been an expensive battle between state senator Leah Vukmir and outsider consultant and Marine Corps veteran Kevin Nicholson — both Republicans vying for the chance to face incumbent Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin in November.
The primary race is widely considered to be a toss-up. The most recent poll, from Emerson, showed the candidates tied at 35 percent support, with nearly one-third of likely voters still undecided less than a month ahead of Election Day. Perhaps more interesting, among self-described “very likely” voters, Vukmir received 40 percent of support to Nicholson’s 33.
But polls are rarely perfectly predictive, and they certainly can’t be expected to tell us everything. Consider that the last poll before the recent Emerson survey, from NBC News/Marist in mid July, gave Nicholson a ten-point edge over Vukmir.
Both Vukmir and Nicholson have hewed closely to President Trump throughout the primary — Trump won Wisconsin by one percentage point in the presidential election — and much of the back-and-forth has been focused on attempts to prove that the opposing campaign is insufficiently loyal either to the administration or to what Wisconsin Republicans want from their Senate candidate.
But those two categories don’t always align. Remember that Texas senator Ted Cruz pulled off a surprise victory in Wisconsin’s April 2016 presidential primary, dominating Trump by a margin of more than 35 percentage points. So although the president did eke out a victory over Hillary Clinton in November 2016, and although he remains largely popular with the state’s Republican voters, his name and his agenda aren’t everything.
What’s more, Wisconsin’s Republican-party operation is large and fairly influential, especially among the state’s more active, most conservative voters, which likely gives Vukmir a slight advantage. She’s a long-time state-level politician with high name recognition and high popularity. Compare that to Nicholson, a former Democrat who has tried to create obvious parallels between himself and Trump as outsider candidates without any experience holding political office.
Trump has not backed either of the primary candidates, leaving Nicholson to find the core of his support from conservative groups outside the state. He locked down key endorsements from conservative groups such as Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and Tea Party Patriots. For her part, Vukmir received a crucial win in May when the Republican Party of Wisconsin voted to endorse her with 72 percent of the vote, and she also has the backing of the National Rifle Association.
Either Republican will face a tough fight against Baldwin, who is not considered to be one of the more vulnerable Senate Democrats up for re-election in a state Trump won in 2016. Preliminary polls show Nicholson has a slight advantage over Vukmir in a hypothetical match-up against Baldwin.
The results of today’s primary will say much more about the ability of Wisconsin’s GOP establishment to continue influencing election outcomes than it will about Wisconsin voters’ views of President Trump or Baldwin’s chances of keeping her seat.