On the morning of October 26, Walker's campaign put out an email warning supporters that the Burke campaign would probably come up with some sort of "October Surprise" in the final days of the election.
It turns out that this was a major case of projection: Later that day, the Walker campaign-- through its surrogates-- unleashed the smear that Burke was "fired" from Trek. Of course, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other members of the state's media breathlessly picked up the poorly-sourced smear by rightwing former Trek employees with an axe to grind, burying the fact that Burke continued to work for Trek for another 10 years after this supposed "firing." Maybe they gave her ten years to clean out her desk?
To most pundits, this seemed to be the death knell for the Burke campaign. However, something weird has happened: Following this smear on Wednesday, three different polls-- one public and two internal-- have showed Burke's numbers going up, not down since the Trek firing smear. The public poll I'm talking about is PPP polling, which polled for two days after the smear and showed Burke only down by one. The two internal polls, I'm talking about have daily tracking polls the two weeks prior to an election. (Sorry, I can't reveal where I got them from, but the sources are rock solid.) Both showed Burke down by four early in the week, but had closed Walker's lead to one by Friday.
Could it be that the last minute smear was so brazen that it violated Wiconsinites sense of basic fairness and reminded voters of Walker's weasel tendencies? We'll see on Tuesday.
