What to expect from Wisconsin voters

GWEN IFILL:

But, first, John Yang has been in Wisconsin this past week talking to voters. It's a battle-tested state that's seen its share of political turmoil over the past five years.

MAN:

Team Trump pass. Make America great again hats.

JOHN YANG:

Hours before the doors opened on Sunday, people were already lining up outside of Donald Trump rally in West Allis, Wisconsin.

WOMAN:

Go Trump. Whoo!

JOHN YANG:

Jim Marlowe, a small business owner from Muskego, got here at noon for the event that began at 7:00 p.m.

JIM MARLOWE, Trump Supporter:

I see strength and I see power and I see somebody who's not afraid to say it like he feels it. Even if he potentially is a little abrasive sometimes, you know what, when I'm in my living room, I'm a little abrasive too.

JOHN YANG:

Leanne Patnod and her daughter, Kayla Lumay (ph), came from Green Bay, 125 miles away.

LEANNE PATNOD, Trump Supporter:

He may be a billionaire, but he feels a lot of the same way us poor people feel, you know, the tax issue, the illegal immigrants taking jobs, the manufacturing going overseas. You know, we have lost a lot.

JOHN YANG:

All of that praise sounds familiar, but Wisconsin is presenting Trump with something he's never seen before, united opposition from the state's Republican establishment and conservative media.

DR. CHARLES FRANKLIN, Director, Marquette Law Poll:

There is clear opposition to Donald Trump because is he front-runner and a real effort in the Republican Party to prevent him from being the nominee.

JOHN YANG:

Charles Franklin is the director of the respected Marquette Law School poll. His latest survey shows that Ted Cruz has catapulted into a 10-point statewide lead over Trump.

DR. CHARLES FRANKLIN:

That's a tremendous increase, and I don't think Ted Cruz's issue positions changed over that period.

JOHN YANG:

Cruz gained momentum last week with an endorsement from Republican Governor Scott Walker.

CHARLIE SYKES, WTMJ:

The notion that Donald Trump has and that many of the Trumpkins have that the politics is involved with smash-mouth.

JOHN YANG:

In addition, conservative talk show hosts like Charley Sykes are using the airwaves to rally their audiences against Trump.

CHARLIE SYKES:

Ted Cruz was not my first choice or my second choice. I'm more anti-Trump than I am pro-Cruz. So, you know, the key thing at this point is to stop Donald Trump from getting that 1,237 votes on the first ballot of the convention.

He's actually almost this cartoon version of every stereotype that liberals would have of what they think of conservative, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic. But the problem is, he's not a cartoon. He is the leading Republican candidate. And it poses a threat to everything we have claimed about ourselves, everything we have tried to do.

JOHN YANG:

What about the other Republican candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich?

CHARLIE SYKES:

The vote on April 5 is going to be a binary choice. This is going to be the closest thing you have had to a head-to-head matchup between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, and I think it is going to be the first of the rest of the campaign.

JOHN YANG:

But at a Kasich event at a Madison sports bar over the weekend, Brian Keith, an accountant from Monroe, said he's sticking with the man from Ohio.

BRIAN KEITH, Kasich Supporter:

I think that John Kasich has got a huge ramp to go up to try to make it. But, at the end of the day, maybe there is a chance that if he gets some momentum here in Wisconsin, he starts moving forward, that maybe there is something that can happen.

Donald Trump has no character. Sorry to say it. And from what I have seen with Ted Cruz, I'm not sure that he's got the amount of character needed either. So we need better-character people running America and helping America be better.

JOHN YANG:

The Democratic front-runner is also facing a tough challenge here in Wisconsin. Polls show Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie. But the dynamics of that race are very different from the Republicans.

DR. CHARLES FRANKLIN:

On the Democratic side, it's less clear that this is an attempt to prevent Hillary Clinton from being the nominee.

JOHN YANG:

Over this snowy weekend at the Dane County farmer's market in Madison, the talk over breakfast, politics.

WOMAN:

They can get behind such extremism as Donald Trump.

JOHN YANG:

Retired teachers Ruby and Joe Cabibbo now run a bakery. They like what Sanders says, but they're voting for Clinton.

JOE CABIBBO, Clinton Supporter:

Reaching too high isn't necessarily going to get very much done. And I think her approach is more realistic and have a better chance of actually being implemented.

RUBY CABIBBO, Clinton Supporter:

I think part of it is her plans have more forethought and follow-through in them. And I think what she is supposing, she is going to be able to do. And that's why I'm strongly behind her.

JOHN YANG:

But in this liberal enclave, home to the University of Wisconsin, we found a lot of Sanders supporters.

MJ Bauman is a nurse.

MY BAUMAN:

I tell people all the time don't listen what people say about Bernie. Listen to what Bernie has to say. And you will get it, because he gets it.

JOHN YANG:

Travis Korosh is a graduate student.

TRAVIS KOROSH, Sanders Supporter:

He believes in a lot of the same interests that I do, mainly getting corporate interests out of politics, decreasing the price of higher education overall. So, out of the two candidates, he is the choice for me.

JOHN YANG:

Rachel Vierstra and Elissa Raduazzo are Wisconsin juniors.

RACHEL VIERSTRA, Sanders Supporter:

I think that like, in this country, big money has just gotten too much into politics, which is, like, exactly what politics shouldn't be, because it should of and by and for the people.

ELISSA RADUAZZO, Sander Supporter:

If you just look at everything that he has been saying over the entire kind of time frame that he has been in politics or around politics, he's been pretty consistent. And that's not something that I am seeing with a lot of the other candidates.

JOHN YANG:

Polls show this is Sanders' base.

DR. CHARLES FRANKLIN:

Sanders is doing enormously well with voters under 45 and unbelievably well among those under 30.

Voters are telling us in their polls that even young voters are going to go to the polls. Now, that's the great question for Election Day, is, do those young voters really turn out for Sanders and give him that enormous vote, which is holding him up in the polls right now?

WOMAN:

I would like to get rid of the stigma for students. I don't like that, the unreliability. I don't like that. Don't think of us as unreliable. Think of us as people that are just as interested in this as you are.

JOHN YANG:

Clinton's strengths are in urban Milwaukee.

DR. CHARLES FRANKLIN:

Among likely voters, Hillary Clinton is winning nonwhite voters pretty substantially.

JOHN YANG:

At the farmer's market, we also met undecided voters like retired forest pathologist Allen Prey.

ALLEN PREY, Undecided Voter:

Well, I was going to have coffee with one of my friends on Monday, and we're going to talk about it. So, I will be down to the last minute. When I walk in there, I won't know until I'm going to — when I actually get the ballot on Tuesday morning.

JOHN YANG:

It's a dilemma, no doubt, that many voters across Wisconsin are facing tonight.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm John Yang in Milwaukee.