Wisconsin Senate Recall-a-palooza: 2012 Edition

[TJ in Oregon]

If we assume the remaining precincts in Millwaukee County vote with proportionally the same number of votes and the same margin as the Millwaukee County precincts as a whole, this should give Pasch an additional 2613 vote margin. But Darling is up by 3108 and there are 4 precincts still out in Waukesha and Ozaukee Counties. I'd say at the moment by this set of assumptions, the best we can do without specific information about which precincts are out, I think Darling will likely win.

Of course, I have no idea where in Millwaukee County these precincts are and that changes everything.

[TJ in Oregon]

If we assume the remaining precincts in Millwaukee County vote with proportionally the same number of votes and the same margin as the Millwaukee County precincts as a whole, this should give Pasch an additional 2613 vote margin. But Darling is up by 3108 and there are 4 precincts still out in Waukesha and Ozaukee Counties. I'd say at the moment by this set of assumptions, the best we can do without specific information about which precincts are out, I think Darling will likely win.

Of course, I have no idea where in Millwaukee County these precincts are and that changes everything.

They are more GOP than the county as a whole - upper middle class north shore suburbs where the elite used to live, and many still live, that used to by GOP, but went Dem, but are not as Dem as the county as a whole yet. There might be more votes per precinct however than the county as a whole.

I meant the other 39 Millwaukee County precincts in the senate district that have already reported, not the entire county.

[TJ in Oregon]

It's sort of funny because I am watching this on MSNBC and they are really hammering at Waukesha County for not reporting results when 12/15 remaining precincts are from Millwaukee County and only one is from Waukesha.

As someone who is capable of looking at actual numbers it's sort of painful to watch.

[TJ in Oregon]

They spent about two hours talking about how Nikolaus "found" 14,000 votes in the supreme court election but never even mentioned once that the initial count had zero votes in the city of Brookfield. To me that seems like a critical piece of information.

[TJ in Oregon]

The two precincts out in Ozaukee are from "Mechwan," a GOP town. So says Darling herself. Darling says she is waiting for a concession call from her opponent before declaring victory.

That is good for Darling as Miquon voted 3.8% better for McCain than the portion of Ozaukee County in this senate district did overall, though only a marginal difference.

[TJ in Oregon]

59.7-39.3 in Miquon

But Darling has overperformed McCain substantially pretty much everywhere so far.

[TJ in Oregon]

The best place I have to compare to right now is the Washington County part of the senate seat because it's the only one where we have all of the precincts and McCain won it 64.9-33.8.

Darling won it 73-27.

[TJ in Oregon]

...now all of Waukesha is in. McCain won the part in this senate seat 59.2-39.4

Darling won it 66-34.

[TJ in Oregon]

Obama carried the Millwaukee County portion 65.2-33.7, not much different from the numbers in this election at all.

Now, with a 5,013 vote lead for Darling (and my projection of ~2600 additional margin for Pasch in Millwaukee County), the remaining precincts would need to either be much larger than average or waaaayyyy for Democratic than the ones reported for Pasch to win. I believe this is over barring something crazy happening.

[TJ in Oregon]

Let the debating framing and political spin begin....

[TJ in Oregon]

The AP has called it for Darling (or at least has placed a check mark next to her name on their results website).

[TJ in Oregon]

I don't really want to join the cesspool of endless partisan spin, but do want to make one comment about the effects of this result.

The Democrats and labor unions have been publically raking Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans over the coals for most of this year about how the people were going to rise up and strike Walker and his union-bashing policies down. Maybe its because I am usually surrounded by far more liberals than conservatives or maybe it's that a showdown over public employee unions is for me a political nighmare--- I am a strongly conservative Republican who is generally pro-labor, but I have thought for some time that this would be the Republican Party's "day of reckoning" of sorts and it would go down in flames.

But it wasn't. The Democrats picked up a couple seats, one in a district Obama won comfortably and the other by a razor thin margin. But there was no tsunami, no backlash, just an ossification of our current political lines. In a concrete sense, this only effects the control over the Wisconsin State Senate; but in a larger sense shows that the tide of labor power is not very high and a shadow of its former self. To me this is more The Boy Who Cried Wolf than a reallignment: it's the reallignment that wasn't.

[TJ in Oregon]

I love how none of the Republicans are talking about how it took hours to call Darling's race after she was the proud recipient of more out-of-state corporate largesse than any other state-level candidate in history.

The main reason why it took so long to call this race was that only Washington County had fully reported its results for quite a while and a large portion of Milwaukee County was still unreported. It remained unreported even until after the AP called the race, though once almost every precinct in the other counties came in (including all of Waukesha, the outstanding precincts when this was called were 12 in Milwaukee and 2 in Ozaukee). The AP waited until it became clear that it was impossible for Pasch to make up the vote difference based on the outstanding Milwaukee precincts. They called it exactly when I did.

However, the insinuation from the Democrats here is that Waukesha County was the reason it took so long when 10/11 precincts in Waukesha County reported about an hour before it was called and Milwaukee was missing 12 precincts for about two hours. I know the Wisconsin Democrats are going to allege vote tampering in Waukesha County, but the numbers don’t really support it (turnout and the margin were pretty similar to Washington and Ozaukee Counties) and unless they know something I don’t, these allegations are nothing more than a hollow attempt to destroy the credibility of our Democratic process.

[TJ in Oregon]

Some quick numbers on the districts from the DRA (note the "avg" is close to a net of 52% Republican for the state so it's skewed):

SD-13 (Fitzgerald) McCain 50.9-47.8 "Avg" 62.6% Republican
SD-21 (Van Wanggard) Obama 55.3-43.4 "Avg" 54.2% Republican
SD-23 (Moulton) Obama 55.1-43.0 "Avg" 56.0% Republican
SD-29 (Galloway) Obama 53.4-44.7 "Avg" 57.0% Republican

[TJ in Oregon]

The GOP has a new improved candidate for the 18th district which was lost due to Randy Hopper's mistress.

One of three city council members in a village of 687 people, cool.

Is he scandal-ridden? If not then he's an improvement.

[TJ in Oregon]

Final election night results from Racine County:

LEHMAN (D): 36,255
WANGGAARD (R): 35,476   

Freedom Fighters
So I am guessing nothing destructive will happen in WI until November now, or will Democrats cross the floor?

Nothing was going to happen anyway. The WI legislature is done until Jan 2013 and the new body is inaugurated.

In any case, this Lehman guy will simply be recalled in June 2013. He now has one of the reddest districts in the state.

Wow... there's now way a Democrat will win the new SD-21 in November once Kenosha and Racine are both in SD-22.

[TJ in Oregon]

Don't forget about the Racine seat the Democrats just took this week. Under the new map it looses the city Racine to SD-22 and picks up the rural parts of SD-22. That should be a very safe Republican pick-up.