What to Watch for While You're Waiting for Wisconsin

Polls don’t close here in Wisconsin for another three hours, so the bros are making a last-minute push for the guys to turn out. I was just out walking the dogs when I got this text message:

(And no, the names Brett Favre and Charlie Kirk do not appear in the same sentence very often.)

My preview with Katie Couric

ICYMI, here’s my IG live chat with Katie about today’s election

Breaking down the vote

As you’re watching the returns come in, the most important thing to know is: Where do they come from? The Dem strongholds of Dane and Milwaukee Counties? The purplish suburbs? Bright red rural areas?

And as the numbers roll in, some data points to keep in mind:

Recent Supreme Court elections have tended to favor the liberal candidates:

Most Recent Elections

2023 Protasiewicz (Liberal) +11.0%

2020 Karofsky (Liberal) +10.5%

2019 Hagedorn (Conservative) +0.5%

2018 Dallet (Liberal) +11.5%

Turnout always matters. But here, it’s the whole ballgame. Elon Musk is spending his money trying to turn out low propensity Trump voters.

But how many does he need?

Last November — when Trump narrowly won Wisconsin — 3.34 million people voted.

The last time there was a Supreme Court election — the 2023 Spring Election which pitted Liberal Janet Protasiewicz and Conservative Daniel Kelly, about 1.85 million people voted.

So, as local political observer Dan Shafer notes:

Even if that turnout number is at 2 million or higher for this year, that likely means that about a million people who voted last fall will not be voting in the election today.

In other words, Schimel will need a big increase in the total vote to counter the liberal edge. Political guru Joe Handrick has run some projections:

• A 23% increase would yield 2.26 million votes.

• A 7% increase would yield 1.97 million votes.

• A 16% increase would yield 2.13 million votes.

• 2023 was 1.84 million.

So far, we’re seeing an uptick in early voting in the areas where Schimel needs to do well. But it’s not clear how much of that merely cannibalizes same-day votes.

One last blast of wonkiness….

Steve Kornacki has broken down some of the key areas — and compared deep blue Dane County with the red areas known as the “Driftless Area, “a largely rural and small-town swath that extends along and inland of the Mississippi River from the Iowa border to just south of the Twin City suburbs of St. Croix County.” The region is filed with “white, blue-collar voters who emerged in droves when Trump first ran for the White House in 2016. It is the cultural and political opposite of Dane County.”

Now consider what happened in the 2023 Supreme Court election. If we use last year’s presidential race as a benchmark, turnout in Dane County for the 2023 court race was 66% as high. That’s an astronomical sum given the office at stake. And the Democratic-aligned candidate won by 64 points, a much larger spread than Democratic presidential candidates typically enjoy in Dane.

By contrast, turnout in the 14 counties that make up the Driftless Area was only 51% of the presidential level, meaning that many of those voters who materialized for Trump simply didn’t take part.

And without them, the Democratic-backed candidate actually won the Driftless Area, a throwback to the pre-Trump era.

That encapsulates the challenge for Republicans in Tuesday’s race: Have they found a way to reach pro-Trump voters in places like the Driftless Area and convince them that it’s a test of their loyalty to the president?

**

So, watch the margins, but also the raw turnout numbers from these rural counties. Schimel will need big numbers of new voters to turn out.

Nota bene: I live in one of the so-called WOW Counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington Counties) that used to be the GOP’s vote-generating juggernaut. Republicans still win there, but in recent years their numbers have trended downward. Schimel is from vote-rich Waukesha and will do well there. But the numbers from Ozaukee County could be an early indicator of GOP softness.

Finally….

And this is very important: Milwaukee’s votes — which lean heavily Democratic —tend to be counted very late.

There are expected to be around 48k-50k early Milwaukee votes (mail and in-person) counted tonight. Assuming Crawford wins by 50-60 points that could result in a late net swing of 25K to 30K votes toward the liberal at the end of the counting.

So, hang in there until the end.

Election night dogs

Eli returns from his ramble in the woods.