I cannot agree with Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen that the Republicans’ Tuesday victory in a Wisconsin Supreme Court election means that Donald Trump “is becoming a slight favorite for reelection.” As he notes, the narrow margin separating the candidates was almost entirely explained by differential turnout. Republican stronghold counties turned out at 53 percent while Democratic ones turned out at 51 percent, and Milwaukee lagged behind at 38 percent. That appears to have been enough for the GOP, as they currently lead 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent. It’s no secret that conservatives are more motivated than liberals to take control of the nation’s courts, and they tend to skew older, whiter and more affluent, which are all variables associated with higher turnout in low-profile elections.
Nonetheless, the result is disappointing and should serve as a warning sign that the Badger State will be in play in 2020. Yet, one major difference between 2016 and 2020 is that in 2016 Scott Walker was the governor of Wisconsin and was able to suppress turnout in Milwaukee.
On election night, Anthony was shocked to see Trump carry Wisconsin by nearly 23,000 votes. The state, which ranked second in the nation in voter participation in 2008 and 2012, saw its lowest turnout since 2000. More than half the state’s decline in turnout occurred in Milwaukee, which Clinton carried by a 77-18 margin, but where almost 41,000 fewer people voted in 2016 than in 2012. Turnout fell only slightly in white middle-class areas of the city but plunged in black ones. In Anthony’s old district, where aging houses on quiet tree-lined streets are interspersed with boarded-up buildings and vacant lots, turnout dropped by 23 percent from 2012. This is where Clinton lost the state and, with it, the larger narrative about the election.
Without a Republican governor in 2020, it’s going to be impossible for the state’s Republicans to replicate that degree of voter suppression, so in order to carry the state Trump is going to need to do better than he did in 2016 with the people who actually get to cast a vote. Mr. Olsen is probably correct when he predicts that Trump will do better than his approval numbers. If he doesn’t, he’ll lose as badly as Herbert Hoover, George McGovern, and Walter Mondale did in their futile election bids. Most likely, Trump will easily clear 45 percent and perhaps even win Wisconsin, but nothing in Tuesday’s election results really should give him much more optimism than he had last week.
It does indicate that the GOP has not collapsed in Wisconsin, but I don’t know anybody who thought that it had. If the overall election in 2020 is close then the election in Wisconsin will be close. But we knew that already.
Wisconsin will be close because voter suppression works. This election was blatant suppression, because it took place on a date that busy people don’t identify as `election day’.
Suppression starts with making it hard for the `wrong type’ to even show up.
Wisconsin voters keep electing people who opening support disenfranchising `others’, so the logical conclusion is…..Wisconsin voters approve of disenfranchising the poor, and POC.
Wisconsin will be close until they stop electing racists.
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I wonder how the media treated it. Did they even say anything on Monday for example? Did they say anything Tuesday other than report the results?
Donald Trump will get between 40% of the vote and 47% of the vote. If I had to guess, I’d put him at 46%, same as last time — people who voted Libertarian because they expected him to be liberal on some issues are sure to come back home now that he’s demonstrated he’s a solid conservative. However, there are also suburban moderates who are seeing increases in their tax bill and they didn’t care much for Trump to begin with. After two years they can’t stand him. After four they’ll be braying for blood. Trump’s approval in Wisconsin isn’t great. In fact it’s worse than Pennsylvania.
Speaking of which, Pennsylvania will be ground zero. If he loses there, he will lose Michigan and Wisconsin. Someone ask Tom Wolf and John Fetterman how they’re feeling about that prospect.
Last I heard (I live just north of Wisconsin) that vote was headed for a recount? I think the difference was just over 5,000 votes.
So, you’re a Canadian? They’re calling it a “potential” recount but given the margin of 0.49% that’s well within the margin for a recount. My guess, we won’t see much change because Milwaukee didn’t show up.
Could be northern Michigan.
Upper Peninsula, which is different from Northern Michigan – a Yooper.
True. But they’re both Michigan and not Canada.
Not yet they’re not…
AG
Wait a minute here, folks.
It’s invariably true that if a liberal is going to win a statewide race in Wisconsin, she has to roll up overwhelming leads in Milwaukee and Dane (Madison) counties, and hope to split the vote elsewhere. That’s what Evers and the other statewide Democrats did in November. Neubauer’s campaign failed to deliver largely because she had a weak to non-existent operation in the communities of color in Milwaukee. That was not the case back in the November election.
This was an election that could have been won. It was lost thanks to complacency and bad execution on the part of Neubauer and her team.
Thank you for your informed input.
Your analysis is glib; discounts over 10 years of voter suppression of blacks by Republicans in Wisconsin. Democracy is effectively terrorized in Wisconsin. The national Democratic Party seems indifferent. That we lost, again, in Wisconsin, if proof is required, if you ask me, is that the Democratic Party has abandoned Wisconsin; not “the fault of Neubauer and her team.” It happens election after election here–no support from the national Democratic Party. Wisconsin is expendable–on purpose–because the national Party likes the status quo with Republicans supporting the oligarchs in charge. A lot of Wisconsin hates Democrats because it’s clear over and over again that Democrats don’t give a shit about Wisconsin. Looking forward to hosting next summer. Should be good.
If it wasn’t the fault of Neubauer and her team, then you have to explain how Dallett won a Supreme Court race a year ago, Evers and all the other statewide Democratic candidates won 5 months ago, and Neubauer lost an election that everyone (even a lot of Republicans who gave Hagedorn up as a lost cause) thought she would win.
I have little patience with your reasoning, not because it’s wrong per se — of course voter suppression is a big deal here — but because there’s always an excuse why Democrats go on losing. If it isn’t voter suppression it’s gerrymandering. If it isn’t gerrymandering it’s dark money. If it isn’t dark money then blame the voters, they’re so racist. No idea what their self-interests are, why don’t they just listen to us, blah-blah-blah? If it isn’t racism then the national DP is abandoning the states.
The problem with all that is that it just leaves you crying in your beer, blaming the cruel fates, as helpless at the end of the discussion as you were at the start. You’re giving up all your agency. Somehow or other, when the Republicans got beat by Dallett, when they got beat by Evers, they didn’t fall apart like a handful of wet toilet paper and break down in tears. They adapted, they sucked it up, they saw an opportunity and the went with it. That’s leadership. That’s how you take and hold power. Until the Democrats can do that they will be standing on the sidelines muttering about how unfair it all is.
How about asking this: the Democrats won the statewide races in November. Wasn’t by much, and that’s a problem, but they won. Why did they win? How did they win? Neubauer and her team failed to do this basic analysis. And that’s why they lost.
They lost. Period.
It’s way past time that somebody started taking some responsibility for this mess we have here. You can’t fix something that you won’t admit is broken.
So, you believe the national Democratic Party is concerned about Wisconsin? You cite other recent elections where our Democratic candidates won (Dallett, Evers).
What about our state legislature? Regaining majorities there looks to be all but impossible in the near future. Over the past fifteen years or so the Republican Party, its monied, mostly out-of-state investors, have shown much more interest in our elections than Democrats have. To the point now where it’s clear that minority voters in Milwaukee at least, face serious risk given the obstacles to voting.
What about Clinton in 2016? Where was the national Democratic Party that year? And it wasn’t just the presidency that was lost in Wisconsin. We lost the Senate race (Republican Johnson was re-elected). We lost one (more) seat in the state Assembly, and two in the state Senate. Turnout crumbled in 2016. It’s too easy to blame Clinton, right? But it’s fair to say that neglect by the national party had more than a little to do with it, despite the (many) other obstacles Democratic candidates have to face every election in Wisconsin. If it’s not clear that the Democratic Party in Wisconsin needs more help from its national leadership, and if they continue to fail to act to address it, Wisconsin will remain a liability to our party’s goals going foward.
The fact that something like 900 state legislative seats were lost by the Democrats under Obama is evidence that the national Democratic Party did not care much about the condition of any of the state parties, at least through 2016. Whether that attitude of neglect extended more to Wisconsin than any other state I could not say. I would say that Clinton’s campaign — which is a separate operation from the Democratic Party — certainly didn’t care much about Wisconsin, she famously didn’t bother to campaign here after she lost the spring primary because she was so sure she could win the general election. And turnout did crumble in 2016.
But it shot up in 2018. Minority voters in Milwaukee mobilized in significant numbers in that election, in spite of the obstacles to voting that did not change materially since the election two years before.
And then those numbers went back down in the election last week.
I won’t defend the national Democratic Party, I think it’s a hot mess. But something else other than their neglect, or lack thereof, of the DPW is driving turnout in elections here.
If you believe that the DPW needs more help from the national organization, what kind of help could the national organization offer the DPW that would make a difference?
Voter suppression is a big deal here but it’s been baked into the cake since the enabling laws were passed, which was around 2014. So the Republicans won’t have to “replicate” anything, as long as they control just one house of the Legislature the laws will stay in place.
What we proved in 2018 was that voter suppression can be overcome by effective voter mobilization and a candidate that people can be persuaded to vote for. Under those assumptions it is possible to get the people who would otherwise be disenfranchised by the process to get out and vote. Clinton’s campaign in 2016 was not capable of mobilizing people and she wasn’t even bothered to come here to try. In fairness to Neubauer it has to be said that judicial campaigns are harder to mobilize around, but Rebecca Dallett did it here in 2018.
Point being, there’s always a search for some extrinsic factor — voter suppression, gerrymandering (irrelevant in a statewide election), dark money, etc., when one of these campaigns loses. Nobody, especially the Democrats here, seems to want to look closely at what the reasons were that one of their campaigns won. They just go back to losing.
Neubauer got more votes than Dallett.