Pollsters agree on voter anger as recall motivator

Experienced political analysts Paul Maslin and Gene Ulm agreed that voter anger will drive a recall election involving Gov. Scott Walker,
The two appeared together at a WisPolitics luncheon in Milwaukee, one day after the state Democratic Party announced it had submitted more than 1 million signatures to recall Walker.
Maslin, a Democrat who is working as Kathleen Falk’s pollster, suggested that dismay with Walker is far stronger than the disapproval politicians typically face, because of Walker’s "bullying tactics."
Ulm, a Republican, agrees with Maslin that the race will be very close and dominated by polarized voters, but predicts that the increasing passion in recent years among "ideological conservative" voters will prevail to keep Walker in office. Ulm said there is support for Walker within some unions too, pointing to Sen. Alberta Darling’s success with trade union workers in her 2011 recall election.
"The biggest mistake the Democrats will make is treating unions as a monolith here. There’s a huge cultural difference between trade union-type voters here and public employee unions," said Ulm. "One drinks beer, the other drinks wine. One thinks opening day of deer-hunting season should be a public holiday and has 12 consonants in their last name; the other went to college and is a public employee somewhere."
However, Maslin called the intensity of the Walker recall unprecedented.
"I think there is a strong feeling that this man went way beyond what a Tommy Thompson, a Jim Doyle or anybody, a George Bush even, would have done, and did it in a different way, and did it in a way that’s not Wisconsin, and divided people excessively and used tactics that were frankly, bullying," said Maslin. "If he had done this in a very different way, even with the same set of policies, I’m not sure we’d be where we are today."
– WisPolitics.com