Wisconsin presidential primary comes as voter enthusiasm for 2024 matchup drops
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump will land in Green Bay on a day Wisconsin voters head to the polls for the state's presidential primary — and, this year, with markedly low enthusiasm.
The race for president solidified between Trump and President Joe Biden arguably months before Tuesday's presidential primary election — a departure from past presidential cycles that compounds voters' already low enthusiasm for a 2020 rematch.
Low approval for both of the major parties' candidates coincides with a stark drop in the number of voters who consider themselves "very enthusiastic" to cast ballots this year, according to recent polling by the Marquette University Law School.
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Days before Tuesday's primary election, in which Biden and Trump are expected to easily win their respective party contests, that universal distaste could be found in interviews with mall shoppers in the purple Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield. Each groaned, sighed and winced when asked about their choices for president this year.
"I just think they both stink," Heather Leasure, 39, of Walworth County, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I don't think we've had a good candidate since (former Arizona U.S. Sen. John) McCain and Barack Obama were in."
Mindy Gutzmann of Milwaukee said she wasn't sure if she would even cast a ballot in the presidential race Tuesday.
"I don't really feel like there is a good candidate," Gutzmann said. "I'm hoping that as time goes on, someone will pop out that is more middle of the pendulum instead of being extreme on either side."
"I don't know that Biden has the mental capacity for another four years. And I don't think Trump has the moral capacity for the next four years. So I'm at a loss."
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Steve and Burdie Alles of Wauwatosa, both in their 70s, said, for them, Trump is the "lesser of two evils."
"How would I say this? I'm not thrilled with either candidate," Burdie Alles told the Journal Sentinel. "But I'm definitely not in favor of Joe Biden having another four years."
Steve Alles said he believes Trump "is a little healthier" — a sentiment most voters echoed — "but still, neither one of them should be in there running."
And Dewayne Bell of Milwaukee said he will probably vote Tuesday but doesn't like either candidate.
"Neither one of them should be the president," Bell said.
"Joe Biden, I feel like he don't do enough. And then I feel like Donald Trump, he tries too hard to get people on his side, when I don't feel like he's doing the right stuff either."
The Brookfield shoppers are not alone.
In January 2020, three months ahead of that year's presidential primary, 68% of voters told the Marquette University Law School pollsters they were "very enthusiastic" about voting in the upcoming presidential election. In January of this year, that percentage dropped nearly 20 percentage points to 49%.
Charles Franklin, Marquette University Law School poll director, said the drop in enthusiasm was driven by Democratic voters' concerns and has marginally improved since Biden's State of the Union address in early March.
"On a variety of issues, and on overall job performance, Biden is weak, and Democrats have worried a lot about that this year," Franklin said.
"Then you add to that those who are very concerned about the Palestinians and the situation in Israel ... (and) there's an additional faction within the party that now has a substantive policy disagreement with Biden as well," he said. "So you get both policy disagreement and malaise about how his campaign was looking and how he was looking as president."
Trump is not as popular among Republicans in the January poll as he was in January 2020, Franklin said, but has gained approval back within his party over the last year, according to Franklin. Meanwhile, Biden has slipped in support among Democrats within the last year.
"On enthusiasm, Trump supporters are way more enthusiastic than Biden supporters," he said.
So far, Biden's campaign and official travel behavior have reflected the headwinds he faces in his reelection bid — with seven visits from Biden or a top administration official since January.
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Meanwhile, Trump's visit to Green Bay on Tuesday is the first stop the former president has made in Wisconsin since the launch of his 2024 campaign.
In an interview Monday with conservative radio host Dan O'Donnell, Trump suggested his rally and the message in Wisconsin would focus on immigration and his continued campaign to falsely claim he won Wisconsin in 2020.
"The second time we actually did much better than the first time," Trump said in the interview on WISN-AM, referring to the 2016 election and the 2020 election. Unlike 2016, Trump did not win the 2020 election, however.
Franklin said on the issues of immigration and the economy, which are typically rated as the most pressing matters, Trump fares better in polling. On abortion, Biden is ahead. But when voters are asked how they view the candidates as people, Biden is leading Trump.
"If you just added up the advantages across issues, you would think Trump should be winning this hands down," Franklin said. "But on personal characteristics, it's more of a mixed bag. Biden is certainly seen as much more too old than Trump is, but Trump is seen as more corrupt and doesn't have the right temperament to be president."
About 17% of Wisconsin residents polled by Franklin say they view both candidates negatively, like the voters in Brookfield. Franklin said that's a higher percentage than pollsters saw in 2020 but lower than in 2016.
He said high numbers of voters who don't like either candidate is a recipe for third-party candidates to gather enough votes to be consequential in a race, as was the case in 2016 when Wisconsin was the tipping point of the election and Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by less than one percentage point.
Daphne Chen and Madeline Heim of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin presidential primary comes with voter enthusiasm dropping
