A few numbers ahead of tonight's primary results

3 hours before the polls close for the statewide primary for Supreme Court, I was curious to see what the turnout was in the last 2 Febraury primaries for that statewide office. I also wanted to see what 6 counties had the largest number of votes in that primary, as those 6 counties have made up approximately half the votes in the last 2 February elections.

2018 primary - 534,980 total votes
Milwaukee County 82,050 (15.3%)
Dane County 77,186 (14.4%)
Waukesha 59,556 (11.1%)
Brown, Racine, and Washington were between 17,771 and 18,851 (10.2%)
REST OF THE STATE 261,404 (48.9%)

2020 primary – 705,138 total votes
Milwaukee County 117,875 (16.7%)
Dane County 87,519 (12.4%)
Waukesha 64,830 (9.2%)
Brown, Racine, and Marathon were between 20,939 and 22,738 (9.3%)
REST OF THE STATE 369,199 (52.4%)

That 2020 primary had an extra boost in turnout from another primary in Northern Wisconsin's 7th Congressional district, following Sean Duffy's decision to resign in order to have him and his wife make cash in RW Bubbleworld vs doing actual work. It also included an open primary for Milwaukee Mayor, following the resignation of Tom Barrett, which explains how Milwaukee County added nearly 36,000 votes compared to 2018.

Along those lines, there's also the State Senate primary (among Republicans, anyway) in Milwaukee's northern and northwestern suburbs. That may give a little boost to the share of voters that come from Milwaukee County and the WOW Counties.

Another major difference vs 2020? A lot more money has gone out on ads that raises awareness for casual voters that there's something to vote for today.

Make that $7.7 million in spending on ads and independent expenditures in the SCOWIS primary.

The Dick Uihlein-backed Fair Courts America today reported upping its pro-@JusticeDanKelly buy to nearly $2.4 million.

See more in today's @wispolitics Report. https://t.co/EVyoRqDHsi

— JR Ross (@jrrosswrites) February 17, 2023

So I'm going to look to see if we get past 750,000 or 800,000 total votes. I also want to see what the "advancement number" ends up being as a result of this (my guess would be around 250,000). And then I'll look to see if the numbers and vote shares are very different from the patterns we saw in 2018 and 2020.

And then the real fun will start for the next 6 weeks. And by fun I mean "restoration of Wisconsin, or continued wreckage, with a whole lot of dark money being sunk into ads that will have next to nothing to do with the duties of the job." YEE-HAH!

EDIT - Here's one indication of turnout, although we don't know what the absentee vs day-of breakdown will be (I actually voted today, because there was only 2 races on my ballot).

Just over 204,000 absentee ballots returned statewide, per WEC.

37,029 in Milwaukee county -- just a few thousand more than Dane.

20.5k in Waukesha Co. https://t.co/FJkqufZUj6

— Alexander Shur (@AlexanderShur) February 21, 2023