Challenger Brittany Kinser holds a slight lead over incumbent Jill Underly in the race for Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction superintendent, with school choice emerging as a pivotal issue for voters, according to a new poll from RG Research released Tuesday. The survey, conducted ahead of the April 1 spring election, also highlights widespread dissatisfaction with the state’s K-12 schools and strong preferences on education reform.
Among registered voters polled, 22% said they would vote for Kinser, compared to 20% for Underly, with 58% remaining undecided. However, when informed that Kinser supports school choice—allowing state funds to follow students to public, private, or charter schools—her lead balloons to 30 points, with 56% favoring her against 26% for Underly. The finding underscores the potency of school choice as a campaign issue, with 65% of voters overall supporting the policy.
The poll paints a grim picture of voter confidence in Wisconsin’s education system. Half of respondents said K-12 schools are headed in the wrong direction, while just 28% believe they are on the right track. This discontent carries over to funding debates, with 54% unwilling to pay higher taxes for schools—31% saying more funding is needed but not from their wallets, and 23% asserting schools already receive enough.
On specific reforms, nearly half of voters (46%) backed dissolving the struggling Milwaukee Public School district and splitting it into smaller districts with new elected leaders. Two-thirds (67%) said the next superintendent should prioritize raising academic quality, signaling a demand for tangible improvements.
Social issues also loomed large. By a 4-to-1 margin (72% to 18%), voters opposed allowing biological males identifying as female to compete in girls’ sports or use girls’ locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms—a stance that could shape candidates’ platforms. Additionally, 67% favored preparing students for college or the workforce as a better measure of achievement than grade-level skills, compared to 32% who disagreed.
This survey of 800 Registered Voters was conducted online by Scott Rasmussen on February 25-28, 2025. Field work for the survey was conducted by RMG Research, Inc. Certain quotas were applied, and the sample was lightly weighted by geography, gender, age, race, education, internet usage, and political party to reasonably reflect the population of Registered Voters. Other variables were reviewed to ensure that the final sample is representative of that population. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is +/- 3.5 percentage points.
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