Wisconsin Megathread v3: GOP in MASSIVE DISARRAY

[Gass3268]

Dane County has outvoted Milwaukee County. Currently by 1,563 votes

[Xing]

Karofsky might hit 82% in Dane.

[Epaminondas]

The most shocking here is that Karofsky would have won without Dane.

That's like the Dem president winning the popular vote without California.

UPDATE:

Without Milwaukee and Dane:

Kelly        587194   51.35%
Karofsky  556294   48.65%

Not bad.

[Adam Griffin]

The most shocking here is that Karofsky would have won without Dane.

That's like the Dem president winning the popular vote without California.

UPDATE:

Without Milwaukee and Dane:

Kelly        587194   51.35%
Karofsky  556294   48.65%

Not bad.

Excluding 1 precinct left to report in Langlade, the final #s for this are:

Kelly        591119   51.28%
Karofsky  561525   48.72%

[Morning in Atlas]

Remember that time I said Bernie didn't understand how to build downballot power?

[Skye]

Imagine my surprise when I wake up and this is a double-digit Dem victory.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

Courtesy of MapCharts, here's a quick guide for comparing recent statewide results in the State of Wisconsin (using non-TE colors):

[wbrocks67]

Truly stunned she won by 11%. But amazing considering GOP trying to ratf**k it

[jamestroll]

And despite all this, 50-50 Wisconsin will vote for Trump this November.

[Oryxslayer]

Thank God!!!!


BTW, is Kelly from racine or something?

Racine County is a good bellwether county during Presidential years, but leans pretty strong towards the right in any other year. The western part of the county is like the most Republican areas of the WOW counties (Extremely Republican), the suburbs around the city are a lot like Franklin or Oak Creek (Moderately Republican) and then the City of Racine itself is very Democratic, but the turnout can fluctuate a lot as it's a pretty diverse city, especially by Wisconsin standards.

Even in 2008 Obama was only able to win Racine by 7 points when he won by almost twice that statewide. It's a pretty polarized county prone to turnout fluctuations. Possibly one of the few places where the GOP voter suppression scheme worked.

It's also important to remember that WOW like most suburbs is now expanding into exurbs, which is opening up homes for new democrats to move into and produce some suburban swing. Some of these newer exurbs are in South and Western Racine county - it is no surprise that Walker tried to get the Foxconn plant down here. Throw in the normal midwestern out-migration of minorities back to the south, and you have a recipe for a county that has been sliding rightwards from it's old 'pea in a pod' relationship to Kenosha.

[ElectionsGuy]

Wow, Karofsky pretty much duplicated Baldwin's 2018 margins and coalition. Only one county voted differently (Racine: Baldwin '18/Kelly '20). The troubling thing for the GOP for right now is not that they lost, but how they lost. After last night, you can't just blame Kelly's loss on overwhelming Democratic turnout (but it helped). I cautioned before the election that we didn't know what the rural election day vote was going to look like, or how Kelly/Karofsky was going to perform in those places. In the February primary, Kelly did about as well as Trump in rural Wisconsin, offsetting good turnout in Milwaukee/Dane. This time, Milwaukee/Dane turnout was good (actually down as a proportion from February) but the rural areas and the R-heavy southeast did not deliver the needed margins for Kelly. That is much more problematic for the GOP than losing something like 53-47 just because R-leaning areas didn't turn out while the margins might've still been strong (something that was the case in the Alabama Senate race in 2017, for example).

I think this tells us a couple of things about this election 1) the same Republicans that weren't motivated to come out in 2018 were also not motivated to come out in 2020 and 2) Some Obama/Trump voters that switched back to Democrats in 2018 remained in the Dem column. In addition, Kelly did not have much crossover appeal, he didn't get that many more votes than Trump did in his uncontested primary. Korofsky underperformed the D primary totals, but that was more than enough.

However, I'm already seeing bad takes. It's important to remember, this race despite having relatively high turnout considering the circumstances did have fewer votes than any race in 2018 and less than in April 2016. The NYT is characterizing this as a 'major upset', which I think is incredibly dishonest. I never understood why people thought a contested Dem primary and an unconstested Rep primary would lead to favorable circumstances for Kelly. Maybe the 2019 race gave them too much PTSD, idk. Karofksy may have pulled off a larger win than expected but she still got less votes than even Vukmir did in the worst GOP performance of 2018.

I'll dissect some results later, making a trend map from the 2019 race unless people beat me to it (likely).

[ElectionsGuy]

I gotta say something that's way more shocking than the Supreme Court race is Neubauer's re-election to the 2nd district Court of Appeals. She lost the district by 27 points (!!) to Hagedorn in her Supreme Court run yet won re-election 54-46 against a conservative challenger. I thought it was very unlikely that she would win given the district and her run for SC. This district is basically the heart of GOP strength in SE Wisconsin. I'll have to dissect that result by county later, but my guess based on those numbers is that Bugenhagen (the challenger) only won Waukesha and Washington, and lost everywhere else.

[ElectionsGuy]

WOW isn't even trending left really lol, I guess Waukesha is but not too much, its really just Ozaukee.

Waukesha went from 32.5% Evers to 38.5% Karofsky.  If margins like that become the new norm in Waukesha then WI GOP is in real trouble.

(Not that I would expect that to happen)

The state also went from 49% Evers to 55% Karofsky so...

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Remember that time I said Bernie didn't understand how to build downballot power?

I mean, given the margin, it seems clear that his being on the ballot had little to do with Karofsky winning tbh (except maybe at the margins).

[cp]

Sorry to be a pessimist/cynic, but have we heard anything from the state GOP about appealing the results yet?

[One Term Floridian]

Sorry to be a pessimist/cynic, but have we heard anything from the state GOP about appealing the results yet?

The results aren’t close enough for them to steal it, so no

[lfromnj]

I gotta say something that's way more shocking than the Supreme Court race is Neubauer's re-election to the 2nd district Court of Appeals. She lost the district by 27 points (!!) to Hagedorn in her Supreme Court run yet won re-election 54-46 against a conservative challenger. I thought it was very unlikely that she would win given the district and her run for SC. This district is basically the heart of GOP strength in SE Wisconsin. I'll have to dissect that result by county later, but my guess based on those numbers is that Bugenhagen (the challenger) only won Waukesha and Washington, and lost everywhere else.

Yeah there were random tweets bragging about Scott walkers judges losing by 20 points when that was Milwaukee county which IK the local GOP overperforms but still nothing amazing, Neubauer's win is amazing.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Sorry to be a pessimist/cynic, but have we heard anything from the state GOP about appealing the results yet?

Why would they do that? This is conspiratorial nonsense that reminds me of all that talk after Beshear's win that Kentucky's legislature will step in and install Bevin as governor due to "voting irregularities". 

[Nyvin]

Sorry to be a pessimist/cynic, but have we heard anything from the state GOP about appealing the results yet?

Apparently Kelly conceded last night around 8pm,  so probably not.

https://twitter.com/SJohnsonWPR/status/1249854595226050560

[Bidenworth2020]

I gotta say something that's way more shocking than the Supreme Court race is Neubauer's re-election to the 2nd district Court of Appeals. She lost the district by 27 points (!!) to Hagedorn in her Supreme Court run yet won re-election 54-46 against a conservative challenger. I thought it was very unlikely that she would win given the district and her run for SC. This district is basically the heart of GOP strength in SE Wisconsin. I'll have to dissect that result by county later, but my guess based on those numbers is that Bugenhagen (the challenger) only won Waukesha and Washington, and lost everywhere else.

https://twitter.com/we_want_gore/status/1249908575012622337

[Babeuf]

Great wins in the judicial races. So now a 4-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Is that a hard conservative 4 justice majority? Or is there a more moderate conservative who's willing to break ranks on big, partisan, cases?

[Greedo punched first]

Great wins in the judicial races. So now a 4-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Is that a hard conservative 4 justice majority? Or is there a more moderate conservative who's willing to break ranks on big, partisan, cases?

One GOP justice is slightly more moderate.

[ajc0918]

Great wins in the judicial races. So now a 4-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Is that a hard conservative 4 justice majority? Or is there a more moderate conservative who's willing to break ranks on big, partisan, cases?

One GOP justice is slightly more moderate.

Yes and Kelly was very conservative so while this race doesn't flip control it will impact some cases. For example, I saw a tweet in this thread, saying those opposing the WI voter purge now have a majority.

[Dr. Arch]

Great wins in the judicial races. So now a 4-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Is that a hard conservative 4 justice majority? Or is there a more moderate conservative who's willing to break ranks on big, partisan, cases?

The latter, which is a breath of fresh air.

[windjammer]

Who is this "moderate" republican?