A poll released Wednesday by St. Norbert College and Wisconsin Public Radio indicated Gov. Scott Walker holds a 5-point lead over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett going into the .
In a telephone survey of 406 Wisconsin residents conducted between Thursday and Tuesday, 50 percent of respondents said they would vote for Walker compared to 45 percent for Barrett if the election were held today. Five percent remained undecided.
The true gap between the two candidates could be larger or smaller as survey administers said the results included a 5 percentage point margin of error.
According to the survey, it appears Barrett has picked up votes since the 2010 election, while Walker lost a few. In 2010, 38 percent of survey respondents voted for Barrett, but now 45 percent claim he would get their vote on June 5. Walker, on the other hand, shed 2 percentage points as 52 percent of respondents voted for the governor in 2010.
The margin between Walker and Barrett has remained virtually the same in polls released through the month of May. On May 16, over Barrett in a Marquette University Law School poll of 600 likely voters.
Earlier in the month, a poll released May 10 showed Walker . According a Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 likely voters, Walker would garner 50 percent of the vote to Barrett’s 45 percent, which mirrors the current St. Norbert-WPR poll.
However, an internal poll conducted for Democrats show the race is essentially a dead heat, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. That poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research from May 19 to 21, shows Walker leading Barrett 50 percent to 47 percent — within the poll’s 4-point margin of error.
In Wednesday's St.Norbert-WPR poll, 49 percent of respondents believe the state is heading in the right direction while 45 percent think otherwise.
However, 59 percent of those surveyed believed public employees should have the right to collectively bargain.
The Koch brothers and every other rich person who feels that the right wing agenda is the only way to go help with political campaigns then why should not the unions? Why would the tax payers care about seniority for vacations, overtime, job positions etc. Yes there may have been some that abuse the overtime, but remember they were at work and working. The average overtime worker was not getting rich on the tax payers dime. There is job abuse in all fields and not just where the unions were concerned. Nobody is saying that paying more for health care and pensions were bad. Not even union workers or their unions. I want a gov. that will not lie, that will tell everything up front and will help the middle class remain intact, and work with everyone. And not just one sides agenda.
And you have it so backwards on the political contributions. Unions have had an unfair advantage as the largest campaign contributor for decades. They have driven the political agenda, from local to national, without the otherside having the same access to the political environment. Citizens United levelled the playing field giving everyone the same access. Personally, I think all PACS should be illegal, INCLUDING UNIONS, and only individual contributions allowed. As far as why should the taxpayer worry about overtime, healthcare, pensions and vacations, apparently you've lived in a world where you think all those things are free. Well they're not. As a matter of fact, all those benefits eat up 85% of every tax dollar. Those reforms you whine about have saved the middle class and thousands of public sector jobs.
What exactly does seniority have to do with building and maintaining a union that is supposed to be fair to all it's members? All it seems to do is build in an enforcement arm of the union that bullies everyone else in it. Look at MTEA and how the seniority refused to take any pay cut even to save 200+ jobs. Most people agree that unions were needed 100 years ago, but they have failed to evolve into an organization that is still beneficial to it's members. It's time they took a look at themselves and determine how to step into the 21st century before go the way of the dinosaur.
I do not feel that corporations are evil. I just do not believe that they have their employees first. Most larger corporations are about the dollar and their shareholders. Yes, I understand that the shareholders gave the money in the first place, but it seems to me they now just want to get rich fast along with CEO's. They all seem to forget that the worker is still the one doing the work so the product is produced and can be sold at a profit and making the shareholders and the CEO's their money. In todays world if you don't have the money to spend because of low salaries, you can't buy. If you can't buy, nothing is sold and the worker loses salary and benefits. But not the owners, or most shareholders of the corporation. Yes this maybe a simplistic view but I do understand how most of this works. So are corporations evil? I don't know, but I do know those at the bottom are not given their due.
The larger unions have political fundraising arms that support (mostly) Democratic candidates because they are marginally more pro-worker than the Republican party. There are Republicans on the far-right fringe of the party who want to take away the financial power of Democrats so attack the unions. Mayor Barrett is being outspent 25:1 by Scott Walker. If these Republicans succeed in wrecking unions (and those campaign gifts), the Democratic Party will be permanently weakened. If that happens America will become a basically one-party system, one that leans far, far to the right. That scares me personally because that stinks of right-wing Socialism. Our country needs both parties. I hope you will help restore balance to our country by starting with a vote to recall Scott Walker, which will add some balance to the state legislature. After all, we have two right-wing brothers, one in charge of the state Assembly and Senate, and an extreme right wing Governor. Since they are working for special interests and not Wisconsin, we need balance!
Of course right now federal spending under Obama is the second lowest since World War II (apart from the stimulus spending that was required to save the U.S. economy from the Great Recession, which was not of Obama's making).
That's why we have to recall Scott Walker next month! Perhaps Barrett can reduce some of the "bomb" damage that would otherwise happen in July!
This is the first great test of Citizens United, unfettered corporate giving vs. the convictions of ordinary people. I believe the ordinary people who vote for Walker are the misled, the easily duped, and the ones susceptible to repetitive marketing.
The BII is an "extreme free-market promoting think-tank funded by the Coors family (Castle Rock Foundation) and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation." There's plenty more at this site, which has done its homework (sources cited). Nothing that comes from BII or economics mercenary Tuerck could be considered objective. Greg, why did you try to present highly partisan/questionable information as "real numbers?" http://www.sciencecorruption.com/ATN184/00340.html http://www.beaconhill.org/AboutEXDir2.htm
If Dorothy has a job, or has friends or family members who do, the beauty of the manipulation is that, if she or they lose their jobs, or their taxes increase (via tax credit reduction/loss), she will never even recognize that her vote was responsible. No track back! Pure gold.
All unions do is protect bad employees. If you are a good employee, you would have nothing to fear. State and federal laws cover all work rules that are ordinary, like overtime, equal employment, work week hours, safety, etc... You should relish the fact that your wages aren't held down by someboy else's poor performance. The unions served a purpose once, but now they are just a pariah on the rest of the 89% that are not unionized.
I am curious, once the Milwaukee Police finally get their paperwork straightened out, how many of those criminals that "did not cause any problems at all" really did.
More problems Walker is fixing, guy is on a roll.