Wisconsin Senate Race Tightening, While Obama Retains Wide Lead: Poll

A poll released Wednesday by Marquette University shows President Barack Obama maintaining a sizable lead over Republican Mitt Romney among likely Wisconsin voters.

, according to the poll. The latest poll, released the same day at the first presidential debate, has Obama's lead is down to 11 points — 53 to 42 percent.

The U.S. Senate race, though, between Democrat U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin and former Gov. Tommy Thompson shows some signs of tightening. In August, Thompson led Baldwin by 9 points, but in September, results flipped, giving Baldwin the 9-point nod.

But Wednesday's poll has Baldwin with the edge by a smaller margin — 48 to 44 percent. That's barely outisde the poll's margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

Gender seems to play a role in which way voters lean, too.  The poll shows that women support Baldwin more than Thompson — 54 to 38 percent. Men back Thompson over Baldwin by a margin of 50 to 41 percent.

Those numbers get farther apart when it comes to the presidential election. Female voters back Obama over Romney by 61 percent to 38 percent. The spread between the candidates gets smaller for men, though, with Romney leading Obama 48 to 44 percent.

Results were presented Wednesday during an edition of "On the Issues" with broadcaster Mike Gousha and Professor Charles Franklin, director of the year-long polling project. The poll of 894 likely voters was conducted from Sept. 27-30.