>> The latest Marquette Law School poll has candidates for governor.

Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany.

Neck and neck.

Now, about a month out from the November 3rd election, we check in with poll Director Charles Franklin.

Thanks very much for being here.

>> Good to be here.

>> So let's get right to the numbers.

Among likely voters or poll shows, 49% support for David Crowley and 46% favoring Tom Tiffany for registered voters, it's 46 and 45%.

Another result shows Donald Trump with his lowest approval ratings in your polling down to 38% approval, with 60% disapproval.

So tying these things together, Charles, why is it that Donald Trump's numbers haven't more significantly pulled down?

Tom.

Tiffany.

>> Yeah, if this was just a referendum on the president, then Crowley would be leading by 22 points.

It's obviously not anything like that.

And that just drives home the fact that an actual election between a particular pair of candidates is different from your general opinion about the president or the state of the economy or the nation.

What we're seeing is partisans aligning very strongly behind their party's candidates.

And that's now equally true of Republicans and Democrats and independents leaning towards Crowley, but with an awful lot undecided.

>> So our friends over at Inside Wisconsin Politics talked about the changing favorability among the candidates for governor, and they talked about how Tiffany's had dropped.

But Crowley is much more so.

What is that?

>> Yeah.

Tiffany's down only slightly from August, but Crowley has really shifted a lot.

And this was something we mentioned back in August that a lot of people didn't know enough about David Crowley to say if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion, that surely had something to do with the way he won the primary at the last minute.

He's more unknown than typical nominees would be, and that left a vacuum for the campaigns to fill.

I think the Tiffany campaign, through both greater resources and strategic decisions, have put a lot of negative advertising out.

That has really hurt Crowley's image.

He went from slightly net positive on favorability to now 13 points more negative than positive, and that change came heavily among Republicans, which is one good thing for the Crowley campaign, because those folks probably weren't voting for him anyway.

But is unfavorable.

Numbers also went up with independents quite a bit, and that does matter more.

Democrats barely changed over the month.

>> What about those independents?

How important is that?

>> Pretty important.

If you look at likely voters in this sample, we have 45% Republican and 45% Democratic.

Neither party alone reaches 50%.

That only leaves about 10% who are purely independent, but they obviously are critical for making up that gap between getting 45% from your own party.

You still need some more to win, and independents are slower to make up their minds.

They pay less attention to elections until late in the season, and they are the one group that still can reasonably swing.

>> You were suggesting also that the independents favoring Tom Tiffany is really low.

>> It's surprisingly weak.

I think part of that is, first of all, just on the vote, Tiffany is only getting 18% among independents.

We would be really surprised to see either candidate get less than 40% within independents.

So that number may change over time, but it reflects how unbelievably negative independents feel towards President Trump and towards the national economy, where we're seeing upwards of 80% of independents disapproving of the president.

And that has been a big burden on Republicans up and down the ballot.

And here in the state and nationwide for much of the year.

But it seems to be even worse right now in October.

>> So what kind of headwinds does David Crowley face with the huge amount of money that Tom Tiffany has?

>> Well, he's almost certainly going to be outspent.

The.

I think the question is, does the Crowley campaign have enough money to wage a intense media battle over this last month of the campaign?

When Tiffany has had the advantage in late August and through September.

>> We know on.

On the flip side, that the powerhouse voting blocks in Madison and Milwaukee County could help Crowley will help Crowley.

But what about Outstate?

How is that tipping?

>> Outstate.

We're seeing Tiffany with a substantial lead in the green Bay media market that includes the cities in the Fox Valley, but it also includes a lot of countryside that's very Republican there.

Tiffany is also leading in the north and west of the state, which includes his congressional district, but also other areas comes down to a lot of the counties around Milwaukee, where it's pretty evenly divided, with Tiffany at about 50 and Crowley around 46.

That's an area that used to give Republicans 65 or even 70% of the vote.

But in recent elections, that's gotten narrower and narrower.

Four years ago, Tim Michaels only got 59% in Waukesha County, a place that Scott Walker used to get well over 65% of the vote.

>> So we can probably expect your next poll to show similar close results.

>> Well, you know, even in our big blowout gubernatorial election, Scott Walker won by just over five.

Four years ago, Governor Evers, as an incumbent, won by three and a half.

So if you just go with history, I think you'd expect a close race.

>> All right.

Charles Franklin, thanks very much.

>> Thank you.

>> As to Donald Trump's record low approval ratings, record low approval ratings,