Recall: Governor Walker keep talking and walking

“Poll: Scott Walker losing P.R. battle

By Greg Sargent

The Dem-leaning firm Public Policy Polling releases its full poll out of Wisconsin, and the numbers are striking. Fifty-one percent of voters side with the unions, and 52 percent side with Wisconsin senate Dems. Meanwhile, 47 percent back Governor Scott Walker.

On the core question, Wisconsinites strongly back the right of public employee unions to collectively bargain, 57-37. And voters are divided on whether they would support a recall of Walker, 48-48, with slightly more independents say they'd support recalling him.

But this nugget may be the most interesting of them all. Non-union households are backing the unions, too:

Union households support collective bargaining by a 70/26 margin, but non-union households do as well by a narrower 51/42 margin. Union households think public employees should have as many or more rights than they do now by a 66/32 spread, but so do non-union households by a 51/45 one.

Again, this is a Dem-leaning firm. But these results are mirrored in national non-partisan polls, which have found broad support across party and income lines for public employee unions.

Walker still may win in the end -- after all, Republicans control the governorship and state legislature -- and governors like Chris Christie may still feel comfortable proceeding with less-onerous anti-union proposals. But the landscape has shifted in an unexpected way -- one that is already giving pause to those governors who might have been tempted to emulate Walker's extremism. His overreach has gotten non-union Americans to ask themselves whether they think public employee unions have a fundamental right to exist and to collectively bargain in their own interests, and Americans have answered: Yes. 

By Greg Sargent  | March 1, 2011; 11:10 AM ET 
Categories:  Labor”