Updated: But What Does It Mean? Congratulations to Latest WI Successful Recall Election Winners Halperin & Wirch!

Below is an insightful analysis from the Milwaukee Wisconsin Sentinel Journal online, by way of the excellent site (see the link on our blog roll) 'GoJo' for short, aka the Governor's Journal. 

Before you read the analysis, I would call our readers attention to a few things, notably  that the Sentinel won Pulitzers in 2008, 2010 and 2011, in evaluating their coverage and analysis.  And especially that this analysis cuts through the partisan bullshit that has been flying through the air like a poo-fight in the monkey cages at the zoo, before, during and after this particular series of elections. 

While the right has been trying to spin the two seat loss, and downplay, even outright LIE about the outside big money, big business, corporatists and billionaires who paid for the GOP wins, including through funding an unprecedented amount of dirty and illegal dealings in WI (similar activites in Maryland in the 2010 elections resulted in Republican felony convictions), we should be looking at these elections as well as the Wisconsin Surpreme Court election last April, as trends worth watching in the rest of 2011 and in the 2012 elections, both Presidential and other federal elections, and the more parochial state and local elections across the country.

Also, as you look at the number crunching analysis below, consider the numbers that are NOT included.  No, not the third party candidate numbers, the numbers of the respective failed recall petitions (another area rife with GOP cheating, those stalwart defenders of lawful elections, except when they are not).  There were attempts to recall 16 state senators initially; 8 Republicans, and  8 Democrats.  From those attempts we had six Republicans and three Democrats defending their seats in the recall elections.  But that indicates that there were five FAILED petition attempts to recall Democrats, which is a number that should be added to the other Republican losses in the actual election.  While Democrats failed to win only one challenge to a sitting Republican state senator, and only three failed recall petition attempts.  Which suggests to me, and I would hope suggests to readers here, that the Wisconsin political landscape is not a cakewalk, not a lead-pipe cinch for either party, but that the inroads into the Republican voter block are larger than the elections alone indicate.  This would bode gaurdedly well for a recall attempt on Walker, and he must be well aware of it.  I'm sure if he wasn't, the Koch Brothers could get through to him by phone to explain it to him.  That is why Walker is trying to make it MORE difficult to recall a seated governor than the current rules which apply to him now - the same rules which applied to his Republican friends in the senate.

In the article below, please note that embolded or larger letters are my emphasis added - DG.

The Wisconsin VoterThe Journal Sentinel's Craig Gilbert explores political trends in a purple state.
Summing up the Wisconsin recalls (by the numbers)
By Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel
 
With all nine Wisconsin recall elections in the books, here’s a recap by the numbers, based on the unofficial results gathered by AP:

Close to half a million people voted in these nine races, with about 51% casting their votes for Democrats and 49% casting their votes for Republicans. There was less than a 7,000-vote difference between the combined vote totals for the two parties, with Democrats winning five races and Republicans winning four, narrowing GOP control of the state Senate from 19-14 to 17-16:
Nine Democratic candidates: 244,978 votes
Nine Republican candidates: 238,527 votes

Close to 41% of the voting-age adults across these nine districts turned out to vote in the recalls. That is about six points higher than the turnout in these districts for the state Supreme Court race in April and about seven points lower than the turnout in these districts for governor in last fall’s mid-terms.

These contests were fought on mostly GOP-friendly turf. The nine districts combined (six held by Republicans, three by Democrats) gave Republican Scott Walker 56% of the two-party vote in 2010, about three points higher than his statewide total, reflecting their overall GOP tilt. Only one of the nine was more Democratic than the state as whole based on the last governor’s race (the 32nd district held until last week by Republican Dan Kapanke).

In those six races, the GOP Senate incumbents got a combined 52% of the two-party vote, roughly four points lower than Walker’s performance in those same districts last year. (My broader take on what the results say about the Wisconsin electorate can be found here.)

Below is a race-by-race comparison of the Walker vote in 2010 and the GOP Senate vote in the 2011 recalls. One note about these numbers: the percentages reflect the GOP share of the combined two-party vote in both elections. Votes for third-party candidates are not included here for either year, since they weren’t reported in the initial AP recall returns. As a result the final official numbers will look slightly different.

The six seats held by GOP incumbents:

This breakdown shows that Republican support more or less “held” in three districts, in the Milwaukee (Darling), Twin Cities (Harsdorf) and Green Bay (Cowles) metropolitan areas. It eroded significantly in the other three seats. These numbers reaffirm that the key race in the broader recall war was in the 14th district, where the GOP erosion from Walker’s 2011 numbers shows that Democrats had a real opportunity there to pick up the third seat they needed to win control of the state Senate but fell a little more than 2,000 votes short.

Here are the same numbers for the three seats held by Democratic incumbents:

As these numbers show, these races weren’t very competitive. This wasn’t because the districts themselves tilted Democratic. They didn’t. The GOP had problems fielding effective candidates, and there simply wasn’t as much energy and support behind the GOP effort to recall Democratic senators as there was behind the Democratic effort to recall GOP senators.

As noted above, turnout averaged more than 40% of voting-age adults. The judgment here is that’s a very impressive number, given the fact that these were special legislative elections with no statewide races to draw voters and were held in the middle of the summer. It reflects both voter interest in these contests and the massive resources poured into them by both sides.

Turnout varied dramatically by district. In one district (the 10th) it exceeded the 2010 turnout for governor and in another it came close (the 32nd). Turnout was lowest in the three races that were considered the least competitive and attracted the lowest levels of spending and media attention, the 2nd, 22nd and 30th:

It intrigued me that in his recent bus tour that of the states Obama toured, he essentially went AROUND Wisconsin, where I would have expected him to go through it, or at least some small part of it, as it is, like the other states he toured, also a very important state for the 2012 elections. This particularly surprised me in the context of actual elections taking place, versus silly and unimportant Republican-only straw polls being held in Iowa.

The above analysis by the Journal Sentinel author of what happened in Wisconsin is very correct to focus on the numbers and on the turnout.  GoJo also drew my attention to a longer range polling project by Gallup which looked at partisan trends since the 2008 elections to present, nationwide.  That polling project still showed a Democratic majority among the more highly populated states, and Republican majorities in the very sparesely populated ones, but an overall trend to people self-identifying as Republican or Republican leaning Independents.  This is significant in so far as there seems to be greater disapproval of Republican policies and progress in Congress and in state governments in 2011 polling, with Republicans receiving far higher disapproval ratings, from all demographics, than Democrats.  That suggests to me that the Republican party is fracturing, with the minority being in the driver seat of policy, but the majority of the right not in agreement with their efforts.  This would parallel the drop off in GOP territory support in Wisconsin, which included support in the recall elections for Democratic candidates FROM Republicans, including Republicans who had voted that way in 2010.  If this long term trend, as noted by Gallup continues, it will be an interesting backdrop to current and future trends in politics.  I'm already noticing that Governors, like Ohio Governor Kasich, are beginning to back down from their union busting agenda, which was a significant right wing overreach in the first place.  Kasich who was incredibly belligerant and intransigent to compromise before is now begging for it over HS5.

The story is in the numbers; high voter turn out, high voter participation and awareness, tends to trend in the favor of Democrats, not Republicans.  To the extent that these trends hold through the remainder of 2011 and into 2012, it argues against the success of the farther right wing candidates to win the next presidential election, and argues against Republicans holding much less expanding their gains made in 2010.  If we are seeing such large turnout in off season, never mind off-year elections, it suggests strongly there will be a larger turnout in 2012 over the turnout in 2008, even in spite of the right wing attempts to pass voter suprressing legislation.

The other story from the Wisconsin recall elections that will prove prophetic for the 2012 elections was the role that outside, special interest group money played in the elections.  One of the more articulate statements came from Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (a nonpartisan group), in a Ch. 2 WBAY interview with Matt Smith:

In 2010 there were 116 legislative races. According to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, $17.5 million dollars was spent on all of these races.

For these nine Senate recall elections this summer, the amount reported so far is $37 million spent by the campaigns and interest groups -- more than double those 116 races last year -- according to the non-partisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

"When you have interest groups doing most of the talking, they take the campaign down into the gutter. If a candidate runs a really despicable ad, that candidate risks a backlash from voters, but these interest groups aren't on the ballot, voters can't punish them in any way; they don't risk backlash," Mike McCabe, director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said.

All of which suggests we can expect more dirty politics, less accountability, less transparency, and a lot more money spent by special interest groups in the elections ahead.  And you can bet that the biggest losers will be the voters, and the truth.