CONFIDENTIAL

TO: Jim Doyle for Governor

FROM: Campaign Communications

RE: Wisconsin - September Survey Analysis

DATE: October 10, 2001



SUMMARY: Despite the bogus "confidential" memo from McCallum's pollsters, obviously written for public consumption, the September McLaughlin survey is not good news for McCallum.

To begin with, the numbers are suspect. Every independent poll we have seen this year has said the race is a dead heat. We should be skeptical of this poll, which clearly was done for release and not for strategic reasons. But even if you accept these numbers - which is a stretch - they tell us what we have seen in every public poll this year - McCallum is extremely vulnerable, and Doyle is the Democrat who can beat him.

KEY FINDINGS:

McCallum's vote in a head-to-head matchup against Doyle is 44. Any reputable pollster would tell you that an incumbent who is below 50 in the vote is very vulnerable.

After eight months as governor, a position which can dominate daily, statewide media coverage, one-third of the likely voters still do not know enough about McCallum to have an opinion about him. His effective name recognition is at 68%.

Despite polling during a time of national crisis, which clearly could be expected to artificially inflate the positive numbers of the incumbent executive (President Bush's approval ratings doubled since September 11), McCallum's job performance rating is dismal. Voters were split almost evenly on how they rate the way he is doing his job -- 46 positive and 45.2 negative. His pollsters forgot to include that in their "confidential" memo to McCallum's campaign.

Although McCallum's spinsters claim Doyle's numbers have slipped, Doyle's numbers have improved since January. The vote for Doyle has gone from 20.5 in January to 32.5 now, an increase of 12 points. Doyle's favorable rating also has improved, from 39.5 in January to 43.8 in September. The net difference between Doyle's positive and negative ratings also went up, from 25.2 to 30.8. McCallum's numbers improved more, but only because he started much lower in January; he had much more room for improvement.

The poll was done at a time when the Republican Party has been running statewide radio commercials for McCallum, making him the first public official in the nation to try to take credit and gain politically from doing his job after the September 11 attack. He also is featured in public service announcements running heavily on television, encouraging people to help the victims of the attack. The media blitz undoubtedly helped to artificially inflate his numbers.


Over the long haul, the state's financial, economic, and budget problems, resulting from 15 years of fiscal mismanagement by the Republicans, will have more lasting impact than the artificial lift McCallum receives from the September 11 attack. George Bush the elder can attest to that, having gone from approval ratings in the 90% range to defeat a year later.

No other Democrats are even on the radar screen. Only 33% of the voters know enough about Tom Barrett to rate him, and only 24% know enough about Kathleen Falk to have an opinion. McCallum's pollster did not consider them viable enough to even ask head-to-head matchups against McCallum.

Although McCallum led Doyle 44 to 33 in the head to head matchup, the margin of error for the poll was 5 percent, which could mean as much as a 10 per cent swing. That means the race may still be a dead heat, as it was when McCallum polled in late June, but did not make the results public.



CONCLUSION: The McCallum polling memo was written for release, not as a strategic document, and basically tried to put the best possible face on some fairly ugly numbers for the incumbent. Our campaign has never released any polling data during your three successful races for attorney general, and we will not make our internal polls public during this governor's race, either.


--This memo was written by Doyle strategist Bill Christofferson.