After one of the most controversial weekends in recent Presidential election history, Democrat Hillary Clinton's lead on Republican Donald Trump has grown in Wisconsin. It looks to have massively grown due to the events of Friday.
The latest Marquette University Law School poll has Clinton's lead on Trump expanding to seven percentage points, 44-37, among likely voters. Her lead in Wisconsin was three percent last month.
Gary Johnson from the Libertarian party is at nine percent, while Jill Stein of the Green Party is at three percent.
Six percent of voters said they will not vote for any of those four candidates or do not yet know who they will vote for.
The poll was taken Thursday through Sunday, the time straddling the release of video from 2005 with Trump making lewd comments about women. It was completed before Sunday's debate.
Among likely voters, the pattern of choice in Wisconsin moved based on the day, with Clinton gaining 20 percentage points in that time span:
- Thursday: Trump led Clinton 41-40
- Friday: Clinton led Trump 44-39
- Saturday and Sunday (pre-debate): Clinton led Trump 49-30
"We've rarely seen as large a shift, and we see that shift occuring among men as well as women, among evangelical protestants, among college and non-college, and among independents," said poll director Charles Franklin on WTMJ's "Wisconsin's Afternoon News."
"There's strong evidence there were shifts over the weekend. What is completely unknown and not addressed by our data is whether that will continue...and what impact if any the Sunday night debate had because we had finished interviews before that debate."
He says that short-term impacts don't always last, and that observers will have to wait for more polling both in Wisconsin and across the country.
The poll said the level of comfort voters have with each candidate is still far below the norm for such candidates:
- Clinton: 44 percent very uncomfortable, 9 percent somewhat uncomfortable, 46 percent very or somewhat uncomfortable
- Trump: 53 percent very uncomfortable, 10 percent somewhat uncomfortable, 35 percent very or somewhat uncomfortable
66 percent of voters said they would not describe Clinton as honest. 64 percent also said they would not describe Trump as honest.
In the Senate debate, Russ Feingold's lead on Ron Johnson has shrunk. It was 44 percent to 39 percent in September. Now it's just a two-point lead, at 46-44.
The margin of error of the poll is 3.7 percentage points. 878 of 1,000 voters surveyed said they were likely to vote.
