Deliberately provocative title here, and I’m not going to go on record making a prediction, but I just have a bad feeling about it. The persistent bugbear on the Democratic side is voter turnout. Hong had momentum and energy, with the potential to drive strong turnout of the progressive and Democratic base. By the AP numbers I saw, she had majority support through much of the state, while Crowley won with a majority of Milwaukee voters. Which is to be expected, as that’s where the biggest chunk of our population lives. But also, Milwaukee has historically had soft Democratic voter turnout.
Voters there chose him in the primary; will they show up for the general election?
He’s also the Milwaukee county executive, so of course they know him. But I hadn’t heard of him either, and that’s really the issue. I don’t care about people claiming that we shouldn’t vote D, they’re about as relevant as a fart in a hurricane, since they change the minds of exactly nobody. If anything, they might do some good by increasing people’s awareness of politics. (It’s an empirical fact that repeatedly raising an issue just hardens hardens people’s attitudes and entrenches, rather than changing, their opinions.)
A lot more people are disconnected from politics, or marginally aware, at best. The question that I have is whether enough Milwaukeeans will come out for the general election to offset the lack of marginal voters from the rest of the state, whose attention is going to fade due to the lack of energy, enthusiasm, and sheer novelty of a candidate like Hong, combined with unfamiliarity with Crowley. And since Milwaukee has a track record of lower turnout, I worry.
I mean, Wisconsin had the second highest turnout of any state in the last election…
I don’t think turnout will be an issue, and without trump personally on the ballot, Republican turnout is definitely going to drop.
His endorsee is on the ballot, though. And the wildcard is that this will be the first election under the new Legislative districts, but still, more Republican-held seats are up for election than Democratic seats, and they’ve put up a couple of new constitutional amendments that throw red meat to the base to juice turnout. I hope to god you’re right, but I can’t shake the bad feeling about it.
All state parties have been operating at “campaign levels” since February 2025…
Normally that wouldmt even have started yet, they’d just now be ramping up and it would last maybe two months every two years…
Dems are going to out perform everywhere, that’s why there’s such a big push to get the DNC chair to resign before midterms, after it there’s not going to be any denying that this works better than neoliberalism.
If this is “campaign levels,” that’s depressing as hell.