Wisconsin Senate Race Ads - NYTimes.com WAUSAU, Wisc. - For a few weeks, it seemed that Democrats in Wisconsin might have broken the state's long stalemate and pulled ahead. But a poll out on Wednesday showed that voters were back in a familiar place: dead even. The poll, by the Marquette University Law School, showed President Obama at 49 percent and Mitt Romney at 48 percent among likely voters. In the Senate race, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, the Republican, is at 46 percent and Representative Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat, is at 45 percent. Two weeks ago, Mr. Obama had an 11 point lead and Ms. Baldwin had a 4 point lead. Mr. Romney's rise was clearly due to his better performance in the first debate, but the poll's director, Charles Franklin, said Mr. Thompson had closed the gap with something else: a surge of negative ads. That barrage is inescapable for anyone with a television in Wisconsin, and Ms. Baldwin is fighting back with equal intensity. For swing states in the age of Citizens United, politics on TV is brutish, confusing and depressing. It is a wonder that anyone votes. "With Tammy Baldwin that far left of Obama and Pelosi, she's way too extreme for Wisconsin," says one ad by Crossroads GPS, the conservative group founded by Karl Rove. "She tried to pass an extreme cap-and-trade plan that increased energy costs and risked thousands of jobs," says another by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Tammy Baldwin hopes you don't notice her foreign policy extremism," says one by the Emergency Committee for Israel. Ms. Baldwin's supporters have responded in kind. An ad from the Emily's List super PAC, "Women Vote!," compares Mr. Thompson to spoiled milk and a dead battery. "Tommy Thompson cashed in, traded his influence for millions at a D.C. lobbying firm," it says. Another ad from the Service Employees International Union attacks Mr. Thompson's ties to Wall Street and big oil. None of the above-mentioned ads were developed by the actual campaigns. The race has been dominated by "super PACs" and so-called social welfare groups spending more than $22 million on the candidates' behalf - in fact it has the second-highest rate of outside spending of any Senate race, behind that of Virginia. Ms. Baldwin herself has raised about $12 million, and Mr. Thompson about $6 million. Several outside groups, along with Ms. Baldwin's campaign, have made extremely powerful ads using Mr. Thompson's own unguarded words from a few weeks ago, in which he said, "who better than me, who's already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?" But in the relentless downpour of ads, it's hard for any single idea or image to take hold, forcing voters to retreat to the shelter of general mistrust. The result has left this state, and the country, wary, cynical and deeply divided.