UPDATED: Totals Recall

From Reuters and the Chicago Tribune:

Unofficial results showed Hansen with 20,639 votes, nearly double the 10,601 garnered by VanderLeest. 

The best is yet to come," Hansen told a raucous crowd of supporters, as around 200 began chanting "This is what democracy looks like."

"This seems bigger than me. The support we got seems bigger than me. It's about the people now. It's about we the people. It's about taking our state back. This is incredible," Hansen later told journalists.

and

"My main concern is that people stay fired up for the rest of the year," said Steve Robbins, an electrician from Green Bay and a supporter of Hansen. "This should be a wake-up call to Walker, but it won't be. That guy is on another planet."

Congratulations to state senator Hansen.  Not only his win, but the margin of his win, is a significant commentary on the Republican policies and legislation in Wisconsin. 

What else is significant in the Recall Totals for August 19, 2011 is the numbers of voters turning out for primaries.  Primaries typically generate a fairly small percentage of the turnout that general elections generate, and general elections in presidential election years tend to have a higher voter participation than those which do not.

Which makes the voter turnout for Hansen recall election, and for the two Republican primaries, all the more significant in understanding how this reflects the prevailing views on Republican policies in 2011 among Wisconsin voters, which in turn seems to be reflecting much of the national trend as well.

Per the excellent website "Ballot News", a project of the non-partisan, non-profit Lucy Burns Institute,  the voter turnout was low for Republican primaries, while being unusually high for Senator Hansen. 

MADISON, Wisconsin: Heading into the recalls there have been various projections regarding just how many citizens would show up at the polls. With all of the primaries now complete we are able to get a clearer picture. Unofficial vote totals show that turnout for the primaries ranged from a low of 10 percent for the Republican primary in District 22, up to 35.75 percent for the District 32 Democratic primary. Meanwhile, in the 30th District, the first recall between Dave Hansen and David VanderLeest had a total of 33,106 votes,[1] putting turnout at 37.14 percent. The 2008 general election in the same district had 78,176 votes.[2]

The total number of registered voters in the chart comes from the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board and is accurate as of July 19. Wisconsin has a live database of actively registered voters which is constantly changing and is purged following each general election. Due to this, it is difficult to accurately determine what the voter turnout percentage was in each of the recall districts in 2008, as the total number of registered voters from 2008 is no longer available. In the general election, turnout was about 50 percent, according to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.[3]

According to a press release from the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board in 2010, voter turnout in the 2010 primaries was 19.6 percent.[4] Thus, turnout in the recall primaries far exceeded typical voter turnout. In the 8 primary elections held, a total of 206,014 votes were cast for turnout of 25.77 percent. The high turnout reflects the massive attention being given to the recalls. In typical special elections, voter turnout is lower than a general election. But here, voters are heading to the polls at higher levels than a normal election.

One of the reasons for the Republican efforts at voter suppression by making voting more difficult through measures like requiring photo ID is that a larger turnout of voters tends to favor Democrats.  If that holds true for the recall elections in August, and a planned subsequent recall of Governor Walker, this is indicating a probabe turnover in the control of both the senate and the Governor's office in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Continuing from Ballot News:

The lowest voter turnout took place in the two Republican primaries, 10 percent and 19.38 percent. For the six Democratic primaries, where legitimate Democratic candidates each faced “protest” or “spoiler” candidates, turnout ranged from 22.09 percent to 35.75 percent. In all eight primaries, the total number of votes cast surpassed the total votes cast in the 2008 senate primary contests in the same districts.

Since primaries were only held for a single party – Republicans on July 12 and Democrats on July 19 – voters did not have to be registered to a specific party in order to vote. In other words, all voters were eligible to vote in the primary, due to Wisconsin’s use of an open primary system.

The next recall elections are scheduled for August 9th and August 16th.  Republican policies in and outside of Wisconsin are hugely unpopular, and that disapproval appears to be increasing nationwide.  Hansen is perfectly accurate that the Republicans are doing their best to be willfully blind to that disapproval, at the same time they loudly claim they are listening to the will of the people, a promise they made in the 2010 elections and immediately ignored.  That disapproval will almost certainly result in Scott Walker's recall in 2012, and is highly likely to result in him being removed from the governor's mansion for his heavy handed failures and hubris.