Last night's election shows the 3 types of Wisconsin counties

Last night's results in the two statewide elections indicates that there are three different types of counties in Wisconsin when it comes to voting, if you can tell anything from an April election that didn't reach 20% turnout.

1. The base of blue decency - these counties both voted for Ann Walsh Bradley, and NO on the statewide "hurt Shirley Abrahamson" amendment. Generally solid Dem areas (or areas turning Dem, like in SW Wisconsin), and many UW campuses also are part of this area (not a coincidence there, either).

Ashland
Bayfield
Dane
Door
Eau Claire
Iowa
La Crosse
Menominee
Milwaukee
Portage
Richland
Rock
Sauk
Wood (!)

Feel free to patronize these good people in the upcoming year.

2. Right-wing sheep - these counties both voted for James Daley, and YES on the "hurt Shirley" amendment. Not surprisingly, all of these 9 counties are in the 262 and 920 area codes, and they goose-step to whatever beat their right-wing AM masters tell them. Probably the only counties where Scott Walker is sure to have an approval rating over 50% these days.

Dodge
Fond du Lac
Green Lake
Jefferson
Ozaukee
Sheboygan
Washington
Waukesha
Walworth

With rare exceptions like college towns (or if you have to visit family there), do not spend a DIME in these places.

3. Persuadable and confused swingers - these are the other 49 counties knew enough to vote to keep Bradley in office, but didn't know enough to see through the "hurt Shirley" amendment and had a majority who voted YES for that as well. Many of these same counties voted for Barack Obama in 2008 (and many did in 2012 as well), but also voted for Scott Walker in the 2010s. There seems to be a lot of low-info in these parts, or very casual Democrats who only vote in presidential-year elections, which helps explain why they can be so swingy. If a candidate wins more than half of these counties, that candidate will win statewide elections in Wisconsin, regardless of the votes elsewhere.

It does seem like the GOP's act has pissed off more than a few people since November 2014, because I would not have thought the "hurt Shirley" amendment would have struggled to win, because the YES side had huge amounts of WMC money and AM air time to con a lot of low-info voters (it only won by 53-47, or by less than 50,000 votes). I also would not have thought that Bradley would have cruised by 16 points in a low-turnout election, as those usually overstate the influence of dead-end Baggers.

Of course, it's ridiculous that we even have statewide elections and constitutional amendments in Spring elections at all- there needs to be a larger electorate to decide these issues, and the GOP legislators who voted to put the "hurt Shirley" amendment should have to face the voters to explain themselves in the same election that the amendment is decided. Maybe if the Dems in Wisconsin get some guts, they might make such a requirement part of their 2016 platform, along with rescinding about every other power-grab that's been done by the Fitzwalkerstanis over the last 4 1/2 years. It seems like there's a seething and growing contingent that has had about enough with this GOP crew, and they go beyond the 47% that have consistently voted against Scott Walker in midterms and recall elections this decade.