Gov. Jim Doyle's approval rating now stands at 46 percent, according to a UW Badger Poll of Wisconsin residents released Thursday. Doyle's approval rating had been 52 percent in an October 2008 UW Badger Poll.
""People are tired of him and looking for a breath of fresh air,"" Katherine Cramer Walsh, UW-Madison associate professor of political science, said.
Cramer Walsh said voters are dissatisfied with the condition of Wisconsin's economy and that governors are easy targets in such situations.
This survey comes just a week after North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling estimated Doyle's approval rating at 29 percent. The UW Badger Poll has a margin of error of about 4 percent, and the PPP poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.
According to Cramer Walsh, the 17 percentage point disparity can be explained by the different time spans over which the two polls were conducted.
The University of Wisconsin Survey Center conducted the UW Badger Poll of 507 people between Oct. 29 and Nov. 20, while the PPP poll was conducted over a two-day span.
""In order for the poll to be a scientifically representative sample of the population, you have to talk to the people who are initially sampled,"" Cramer Walsh said. A two-day poll, she continued, misses many of the people who are unavailable during the first round of calling.
Wisconsinites' approval of President Barack Obama has dropped to 60 percent from 63 percent between spring 2009 and November 2009.
Cramer Walsh said she attributes this difference to the end of Obama's honeymoon period, while she said Doyle's six-year record sets voters against him.
""[Voters] have some evidence of how [Doyle] does his job,"" Cramer Walsh said. ""With respect to Obama, they are still reading into him what they want.""
