New poll in gov's race offers reality check

So it turns out that when you do a real statewide poll -- one that randomly calls voters and asks them their opinions -- that Gov. Jim Doyle still holds what the conservative sponsors of the poll call "substantial leads" over both Mark Green and Scott Walker.

Last week, the Green team got giddy over a Zogby poll, taken on the internet with people who volunteered to participate, which showed Green slightly ahead.

The poll released today was taken last week for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank. To its credit, it presented the results without a lot of spin.

Results had Doyle leading Green 46-33 and Walker 50-31, 13 months before the election.

Walker wins only in Waukesha County and Milwaukee suburbs; Green wins in in those same areas and Green Bay, which explains why he runs ahead of Walker. It also shows the hurdle Walker has to overcome as a Milwaukee candidate.

Neither Walker nor Green has broad name recognition. Only about 40% of the voters know who they are.

But suburban Republicans in southeast Wisconsin are ready to vote for Green or any other Republican for governor, while those in Green Bay and outstate Wisconsin are not yet ready to vote for a Milwaukee candidate -- and may never be.

Doyle's personal popularity, at 46%, is not great, to be sure. But it is as high as it's ever been in a WPRI poll since 1993, and 5 points higher than it was in September 2002, two months before he won the last election.

It's going to be a long, hard, close race; Doyle is going to have to fight every step of the way to win a second term. But this latest poll serves as a good reality check for any Republican who thinks it's going to be easy to beat Jim Doyle next year.

Poll results.

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POSTSCRIPT: The Mark Green spin, that Green beats Doyle among people who know both of them well enough to rate them, is cute. But I used the same argument in 1990 when Tom Loftus was running against Tommy Thompson, and we all know how that turned out.