Tuesday's election, by the numbers and the turnout

Ahead of Tuesday's election for Governor in Wisconsin (along with a lot of other state offices and legislative seats), I wanted to do my typical rundown of the factors to look for in both vote results and turnout. This time, I want to look at the patterns of turnout and results from the last 2 Governor's elections in the midterm years of 2018 and 2022, which each had turnouts between 2.65 million and 2.68 million. I also want to add in the 2025 Supreme Court election, which had well over $100 million in spending and midterm-like turnout of 2.36 million votes statewide.

Remember this idiocy?

As I usually do, I am going to split out the state's electorate into 7 distinct geographies.

1. The City of Milwaukee
2. The rest of Milwaukee County outside of the City of Milwaukee
3. The 3 suburban/exurban counties to the north and west of Milwaukee - Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington, collectively known as the WOW Counties.
4. Dane County, which includes the capital city of Madison.
5. The Fox Valley counties of Brown, Outagamie, and Winnebago, collectively known as the BOW Counties.
6. Racine and Kenosha Counties in the SE corner of the state.
7. The other 62 counties throughout the rest of Wisconsin.

When you look at Wisconsin's vote totals, you can see that slightly more than half of the votes come from the 10 counties listed in those first 6 segments, and just under half is from those other 62 counties in the rest of the state.

There are two trends in those electorate shares that seem important to remember. The first is that the City of Milwaukee had over 8% of the votes in Tony Evers' first election in 2018, but that share dimished significantly in 2022, and got even smaller in the 2025 Supreme Court election.

And the second is that 1% more votes in the state came from Dane County in 2025 than it did in 2018, befitting a place that has added more than 80,000 people between 2018 and 2025, by far the most of any other county in the state. The only other place to grow their share of the Wisconsin electorate in both 2022 and 2025 were the WOW Counties, and Dane County's increased share of 1.1% over those 7 years was nearly triple the 0.4% gain in the WOW Counties.

Now I want to look at how Democrats and Republicans fared in those 3 statewide elections, and I want to add the results of the 2024 Presidential election in Wisconsin to have that as another baseline for election results. Let's review the outcome of those 4 elections.

2018 - Dem Tony Evers beats GOP Scott Walker by just over 1%.
2022 - Dem Evers beats GOP Tim Michaels by 3.4%.
2024 - GOP Donald Trump beats Dem Kamala Harris by a bit under 0.9%.
2025 - Dem-supported Susan Crawford crushes GOP-backed Brad Schimel by just over 10%.

So let's look at how these 7 areas of the state voted, and I think it'll give us a good list of benchmarks to go off of as the results come in for Tuesday.

The City of Milwaukee is a Dem stronghold, but Donald Trump limited the Dem vote share to 77% in 2024, which is a big contrast to when the Dem candidate pulled over 80% in their wins in 2022 and 2025. On the flip side, Evers made big gains in the Milwaukee County suburbs between 2018 and 2022, Trump didn't gain much back for 2024, and then Crawford nearly won the Milwaukee County burbs 2-to-1 in 2025.

Crowley should hope to get at least 80% in the City of Milwaukee, and I wonder if he can use his hometown status to crank up the turnout in the City so its vote share gets back toward that 8% in 2018 vs the 6.5% it was at in 2025. Crowley continuing the Dems' strength in the Milwaukee County suburbs is also a must, and doing so would likely help Dems downticket, as two of the Assembly seats most likely to flip to Democrats on Tuesday are in Milwaukee County. Since Crowley is the County Executive, it puts an extra layer of interest on those suburban results - does he overperform because he's liked and better known than Tiffany, or underperform as the known quantity? I think the answer will be "overperform", but let's see for sure on Tuesday.

Much like the Milwaukee County suburbs, Dems also have gained in the WOW Counties during elections since 2018. The WOW Counties are still pro-Republican, but Dems have been successful in cutting into what used to be massive GOP margins. Evers didn't get 1/3 of the votes from the WOW Counties when he beat Walker, but he got more than 38% against Michels four years later. And while the rest of the state was sliding toward the GOP in 2024, the WOW Counties did not, and then Crawford grabbed another 3.16% of the votes against former Waukesha County DA Schimel.

Milwaukee County and the WOW Counties account for more than 1/4 of all the votes in Wisconsin, and those votes have all become more Democratic in the last 8 years. Do you see Tom Tiffany doing anything that would stop this trend for 2026? I sure don't, especially given that all he is offering down the stretch is anti-Milwaukee resentment and Trumpian anti-immigrant fear mongering. In addition, Crowley overperformed in the WOW Counties during the Dem primary in August, beating Francesca Hong by 8-12 points in each of those 3 places.

Dane County is also a major Democratic hub for Wisconsin, but much like the City of Milwaukee, there has been some variance in just how Democratic it is. In the close races of 2018 and in 2024, more than 1/4 of the votes did not go to Dems. But Evers went up by nearly 4% in 2022 vs 2018, and then Crawford blasted into the low 80s when she blew Schimel out of the water in 2025.

Given recent trends, the Tiffany campaign would hope to get back toward Walker's 2018 totals and Trump's 2024 totals in Dane County, while Crowley should be looking to at least do as well as Evers' 78.6% in 2022, with 80% as a realistic goal. Add in the growth in Dane County in general, and Crowley running the score in the Madtown area would be a double-whammy for the Tiffany campaign, and it would be very hard to catch up if he's taking a 200,000-vote loss in Dane County.

The other 3 areas have similar stories to tell. All have been more Republican than the rest of the state in each of these elections, and the "Rest of the State" aggregate was a particular source of strength for Trump, as Dems barely exceeded 41% of the vote in November 2024. But Crawford got more than 47% in that mass of 62 counties just 4 months later, and won the agreegate vote of the BOW Counties in northeastern Wisconsin, as well as Racine/Kenosha in southeastern Wisconsin.

I think it is noteworthy that in 2022 Evers had a slight loss of votes in Racine/Kenosha, even as he gained in Milwaukee County, the WOW Counties, the BOW Counties, and Dane County. Some of that may have been due to the tension from the race riots in 2022 in Kenosha, but let's see if Crowley can keep Crawford's gains from 2025, or if it falls back. Racine/Kenosha are also going to be a key part of what may be a very close House race between GOP Bryan Steil and Dem Mitchell Berman, so keep an eye on those 2 counties for that reason as well. If it's 50-50 or even 52-48 GOP there, Crowley and Berman are both in very good shape.

For the BOW Counties, they seem to be trending bluer, although slowly. If Crowley wins them, he'll be winning the Governor's race by enough that will have a Dem trifecta. If Crowley is down around 45% in BOW, that's going to be in an election where Tiffany has a real chance to win.

While 45% would be a disappointment for Crowley in BOW, it's probably a goal for him to hit 45% in the 62 counties that make up the "Rest of the State", vs being down at Harris' 41% level. An extra layer of that question comes with the fact that Tiffany is a Congressman from Northern Wisconsin and Crowley is Dem of Color from a big city. If Crowley has results like Evers got in 2022 from the Rest of the State, that means any home-district advantage Tiffany may have didn't develop, and Dems will have improved their standing statewide, making flips in the State Senate and Assembly more likely.

This pre-election guide is worth what you paid for it, but I think it's at least some good baselines for you to sound like you know what you're talking about when people claim a candidate is "trailing" or "winning", because they're looking at results as they are being reported instead of caring about where the results are coming from, and how many votes are still left.

Milwaukee shows the way in October. On the field, and in the streets

Been an amazing month here in Wisconsin, and it culminated with something I never thought I'd see.

The power of this group of players who all played for each other and had a shared belief that they would stick with their plan, and make the plays to win? Incredible and inspiring to watch. Teams in sports change year after year, and the guys who won this title all won't be with the Brewers in 2027 (yes, there will be a season, even with the looming lockout). Too much to lose for everybody to throw it away). But with these Rings, this group will be linked forever.

And after an appearance in Lambeau Field the night after winning the title on Wednesday, Milwaukee held its parade for the MLB champs (Wow. Hold on......OK, I'm good again). Wisconsinites and other people connected to the state flocked to our state's largest city showed the love for the Brewers to the tune of 750,000 people (??!!).

Friday's parade also honored the greatness of today while also respecting the past history, and healing some wounds that dated back to 1982.

Know what you never saw? Stories about rioting or looting or other violence during these celebrations, like we'd seen in other cities when a team won a title. For both Wednesday night's clinching game and for the parade and celebration on Friday, it was peaceful and joyous on the streets of Milwaukee, as well as around the state. A multicultural crowd cheering on a multicultural team in a multicultural and fun place, with crowds of happy people able to get around well in a city that looked pretty wholesome on the TV.

Which makes the ending argument of Tom Tiffany and WisGOP for Tuesday's election all the more ridiculous: DAVID CROWLEY SUPPORTS ILLEGALS AND VIOLENT CRIMINALS! DON'T TURN WISCONSIN INTO MILWAUKEE!

That's all you MAGATs have? I dunno guys, I think a lot of people in our state went to Milwaukee in the last month and had a great time, and a lot of national media had great pictures of the Great Place on a Great Lake during the Brewers run. I bet the City and its people came off a lot better than most of the places that World Series viewers live in.

And how much is "SCARY LATINO IMMIGRANTS" going to scare everyday Wisconsinites when the emotional leader of the Brewers and MVP of the World Series is a Venzuelan that helped organize an event this Summer in Milwaukee to raise tens of thousands of dollars in relief efforts for his homeland, after it was stricken with a severe earthquake.

United for Venezuela 💙🇻🇪 Today, William Contreras, Jackson Chourio and Nestor Corredor teamed up with Forward Latino, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish and several community leaders, including @MayorMKE, to launch the “United for Venezuela” Emergency Relief Effort More than a dozen Brewers players came out to support, and cars were lined up for several blocks to donate. Thank you to everyone who came out to support! #BeyondTheDiamond

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) June 29, 2026

Maybe there's a lot we can take from the Brewers' championship run. Including how working together and believing in each other can make things better, and maybe in how Milwaukee ain't so bad or depressing as dumb white people from Nowheresville are told it is.

Let's have people in charge of this state that like the Great Place on a Great Lake, and the people who live in it. And we should stop robbing that city and its metro region of all that it contributes to the state, and invest in it to keep it on the good trajectory that it clearly is on today. You know, like how Republicans love to use tax dollars in the parts of the state they come from.

September spending and income growth both slowed down while prices kept going up

As midterms loom for next week, we got the last big nationwide economic report on Thursday, with the release of September's income and spending report, along with related inflation news. And not surprisingly, prices rose more in that month, as a gallon of gas reached its highest cost since May.

Inflation accelerated in September as consumers paid more for gasoline and other goods, supporting economists' expectations of an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve in December.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index climbed 0.5% last month after an unrevised 0.3% rise in August, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Thursday, Oct. 29. The increase was in line with economists' expectations. In the 12 months through September, PCE inflation advanced 3.6% after an unrevised 3.4% rise in August.

And American consumers cut back last month, not spending any more than that higher rate of inflation.

Higher prices inflated consumer spending numbers in September. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, rose 0.5% last month after an unrevised 0.9% increase in August, the BEA said.

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending was unchanged last month, heading into the fourth quarter on a weaker growth trajectory. Spending increased at a 3.8% rate in the July-September quarter.

Even worse, incomes only rose by 0.2% in September, well below inflation. And it continues a trend of subpar income growth that started in June.

In addition, income from work has had the smallest increases in back-to-back quarters since at least 2024, even as inflation was rising at the same time.

Those numbers also mean that inflation-adjusted income per capita in America has barely grown since January, and growth in this statistic has significantly slowed down after a strong recovery in the second half of 2022 and all of 2023.

So while the US economy and consumer spending might have grown well for it's overall level in Q3 2026 (as illustrated by 3.4% GDP growth with 3/4 of that growth being from consumer spending), it didn't end the quarter well, with income growth and consumer spending slowing while inflation went up. And when the artificial stimulus of election-related spending goes away after next week, how much is growth going to continue going forward?

Wisconsin jobs lose August's gains, but nothing to worry about, and finances look good

With Brewermania and an unusually warm October taking up more of my time than normal, I didn't pass along two big bits of Wisconsin data that came out in recent weeks.

The first was the Wisconsin jobs report for September. And I'll start my breakdown by noting that August had a sizable jobs gain, adding 11,500 jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis. But the "seasonally-adjusted" part is important, as things fell back to earth as Summer ended in our state.

Nonfarm Jobs – The total nonfarm jobs in the state were 3,043,300, a decrease of 13,700 over last month.

Ooof. That erases the gains of August and adds another 2,200 in losses on top of that. At the same time, the state did report more private sector jobs in September than in July.

More than anything, this seems to indicate that more Wisconsinites held onto their jobs through mid-August, and more of those seasonal layoffs happened between mid-August and mid-September and not earlier.

Change in all jobs, Wis
August
Seasonally adjusted +11,500
Non-seasonal adjust. +6,400

September
Seasonally adjusted -13,700
Non-seasonal adjust. -29,600

Change in private sector jobs, Wis
August
Seasonally adjusted +6,000
Non-seasonal adjust. -900

September
Seasonally adjusted -4,600
Non-seasonal adjust. -42,500

In addition, September's unemployment rate in Wisconsin stayed at 3.1% for the second month in a row. Since I don't consider September's snapback in the jobs report to be a harbinger of any kind of future losses, I think this means the state's jobs market is staying in a low-growth, low-unemployment situation that's not unlike the rest of the country.

We also got our first look at the state's revenue picture for Fiscal Year 2027, after we got better-than-expected numbers for Fiscal Year 2026. And things seemed to be off to a good start, especially with a big quarter-end payment of corporate taxes.

Let me remind you that this big jump in corporate taxes at the state level is happening at the same time that corporate tax revenues have significantly declined at the federal level due to Trump/GOP Tax Scam 2.0. So that should give you an idea just how much is being grabbed by these companies with the new (mostly temporary) incentives in place, and it means Wisconsin's fiscal situation gets better because we haven't cut corporate taxes in recent years.

I'm also betting that excise tax number looks better for October after this Brewers run, although what's missing from this equation is the reality that costs are going up on the expenditure side, and that could cause tighter budgets as the Fiscal Year ends and the unbudgeted inflation kicks in. But at least through September, Wisconsin's jobs and fiscal situation was in good shape through September.

A definite Brewer boost for Milwaukee's economy. But what about govt finances?

It's been a big weekend here in Wisconsin, and for my mself. It was surreal to be at AmFam Field for Game 1 of the World Series, as I was 8 years old in 1982 and I thought I might never see the Crew in the Series again. BUT I DID!

Tens of thousands of fans were in the stadium 3 hours ahead of the first pitch (including myself and my spouse), and the lines to get programs and into the Team Store were as long as anything that I can remember. That came after a week of Brewer fans mobbing retail outlets to get some kind of MLB-related gear to commemorate the Brewers making the Series.

Rally House Wisconsin opened its doors in Greenfield after the Brewers earned a trip to the World Series, drawing fans looking to buy Brewers gear without waiting in longer lines elsewhere.

Fans said they came to the store after seeing a line out the door at American Family Field. Many bought shirts and sweatshirts as excitement spread beyond Milwaukee.

Lisa Roebke of West Allis said she was shopping for her family.

“I’ve got my mom, myself, my daughter, her boyfriend who’s deployed right now,” Roebke said. “It’s going to be huge. It’s going to be huge. This is like not just the city, it’s the whole state.”

Which culminated in this report from Sunday.

The Milwaukee Brewers have sold more merchandise this postseason than any team in history, MLB officials told Brewers owner Mark Attanasio.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) October 25, 2026

Our ticket prices for Game 1 were $310 each due to having a 20-game ticket package for season, allowing us to buy tickets for all postseason games back in September. That's a lot less than what many others were paying for the first two games in Milwaukee, especially once non-season ticket holders got a chance to buy tickets last week.

If you don’t have a season ticket package, Oct. 14 was your best chance to grab World Series tickets while they were still under $1,000.

The Brewers held a presale for previous customers on Wednesday, Oct. 14, where nosebleed tickets sold for around $850. Fans were encouraged to grab seats before ticket sales for Wisconsin residents began the following day.

For the postseason, host teams set their tiered ticket prices within guidelines established by MLB.

"Demand for postseason tickets has been extraordinarily high, and the inventory of seats for individual purchase for possible World Series games at American Family Field will be extremely limited," Rick Schlesinger, the Brewers' president of business operations, said in an Oct. 15 statement.

Here's one of many TV reports on the same subject.

I read these reports, and I think we're going to see a much larger boost to the Milwaukee metro area’s economy than what its tourism organization was predicting last week.

Visit Milwaukee, at the start of the playoffs, estimated each postseason Brewers game at American Family Field would generate $3.55 million in direct spending at hotels, restaurants and other area businesses.

That figure, which doesn't include money spent at the ballpark, rises to $5.1 million for each game when it takes into account the multiplier effect. That includes re-spending of those dollars within the local economy by vendors/suppliers and households that benefit from direct spending.

The higher $10 million to $12 million economic impact estimate tied to the World Series is "based on research from other cities since we don’t have anything recent locally to use," said Claire Koenig, Visit Milwaukee vice president of communications & advocacy.

Yeah, I think that's going to be revised up, especially when you consider all of the outside media that came into Southeastern Wisconsin for the Series, which is not something that is displacing spending that might be happening in other parts of Wisconsin.

Sales tax embedded in all of these higher priced tickets sold by the team, and it's paid for in all of the overpriced hotels that are packed for the weekend. Which makes me wonder how much additional sales tax is going to be generated from all this, both at the state level and locally for Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee. For example, could this one-time boost be used to get rid of the $7.9 million property tax increase that County Executive David Crowley and the $6.7 million levy increase that Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson are asking for?

Well, if we go with the Visit Milwaukee estimate of $5.1 million a game for the NLDS and NLCS, that's an extra $20.4 million in spending. And given the extra Brewers gear being sold and the large watch parties throughout the region in addition to the higher ticket prices inside the stadium, let's assume there is $25 million in additional spending for each game that otherwise wouldn't happen.

And given that it is guaranteed that there will either be 1-2 more games in Milwaukee or a parade in the City because the Brewers wrap up the Series this week in Tampa (!!), let's cautiously add another $25 million in funds that'll be brought in from that. So $75 million in extra impact from the Series. Put in together, and I have $95.4 million in additional spending for the Milwaukee area.

The biggest fiscal winner from the Brewers' run might be the state of Wisconsin IF extra spending in the 414 and 262 counteracts whatever might be taken away in other parts of the state (for example, we were spending money in Milwaukee vs Dane County on Friday night because of Game 1 of the Series, but spending more than we otherwise would have that Friday). If there's extra spending in the state due to the Series, then 5% of those sales going to the state, plus tax on whatever extra income that workers get out of is - higher percentages than the sales tax in either Milwaukee County or the City of Milwaukee.

If you allocate 2/3 of that to the City, it's $63.6 million for the City and $31.8 million elsewhere in the County (yes, there is an impact in the surrounding counties, but let's keep it simple and assume that people coming into MKE from those counties and spending there will offset the extra dollars spent in the non-MKE counties).

$63.6 million * 2% sales tax = $1.272 million in extra sales tax for City of Milwaukee.

$95.4 million * 0.9% sales tax = $858,600 in extra sales tax for Milwaukee County.

So it's a bigger impact for the City's finances than the County, but neither would seem to be able to wipe out the requested increase in tax levy required on its own.

But perhaps the property tax increase could be reduced since there would be more money to carry over 2027, or it could prevent service limitations or other fee increases. And I don't think it would be a bad political move for a certain Milwaukee County Executive running for Governor to agree to lower property tax in exchange for higher sales tax revenues as a result of so many people heading into Wisconsin's largest city during the Brewers' attempt to win their first championship. And for Mr. Crowley to say other cities and counties in Wisconsin should be able to add sales taxes and trade that for lower property and wheel taxes.

We'll see the effect on those state numbers late in November, when they report their revenue figures for October. And we wouldn't get the added sales tax in Milwaukee until December, when the state sends down local sales tax shares to those communities and all others that have sales tax. And I do think a minor Series bump will show up in Wisconsin's state and local finances over the course of the next few months.

But it's nothing compared to the boosts that come over a full year from economic growth and/or consistently increased spending, either from tourists or locals. So while the state has Brewer Fever and it's incredible to be living through right now, it's also not going to be some kind of game-changer when it comes to the state's economic performance or the amount of resources that may be available. So let's enjoy it while we got it, right?

The guy who oversaw Evers budgets says Tiffany's math doesn't add up

The day that David Crowley and Tom Tiffany had their only debate, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a column written by Joel Brennan, who you may remember as someone who also wanted to be Governor in this election, but finished a distant 4th in the Dem primary behind Crowley. Brennan also served as Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration for Tony Evers' first term, and was in charge of overseeing the budgets that Evers presented every two years.

So as a guy who knows a bit about budget numbers, let's listen to what Joel Brennan has to say about what would have to happen in order to make Tiffany's plan to remove the state's income tax work out.

The first option is to make you pay at the checkout line. To replace the income tax, Wisconsin’s sales tax would have to more than double, to nearly 13%. ( I say 12% given inflation, but you get the idea) The conservative Badger Institute says that would give us the highest sales tax in America. Every pair of school shoes, every car repair, every new furnace in January would cost you more, and the families on the tightest budgets would feel it first.

And let me give a visualization of Wisconsin's revenue mix, to remind you that our state's income tax is Wisconsin government's largest revenue source.

But Tiffany insists he wouldn't raise any other taxes to make up for the income tax cuts, so Brennan looks at how much spending would have to be cut to make the numbers work.

The second option is to gut the things that make Wisconsin work. Tiffany’s campaign swears he won’t raise any other taxes, so let’s do the math he won’t. Using the state’s own budget numbers, if you spread the cut across our schools, health care, the UW, technical colleges, prisons, child and family services, and aid to local communities, every single one of them gets cut in half.

If you try to protect our schools and corrections, you’d have to wipe out every state dollar for health care, including BadgerCare and nursing home care, along with the UW, our technical colleges, and local property tax relief. If you protect health care instead, every dollar of state aid to our K-12 schools disappears. There is no version of this “plan” where your kid’s school, your mom’s nursing home, and your local fire department all come out whole.

For an idea of scale, let me give you numbers from last week's Annual Fiscal Report for Wisconsin, showing which agencies and areas of government have the largest expenses for the state.

Let's not forget that Tiffany's fellow Republicans worked out a deal with his opponent to send a huge increase in shared revenue that disproportionately helped their rural districts. So is Tom Tiffany going to reduce all those boosts in shared revenues and cause even more service cuts and higher property taxes after promising no increase in taxes and nothing getting cut? Well, he still might do that because GOPs assume their yokel voters are morons who'll accept anything, but I can't think that would fly with most Wisconsinites.

But Tiffany insists there's a third way, where taxes go down and the economy is so great that the revenues . If this sounds familiar, Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessentt trots out this line on occasion, even while the US budget deficit was surging in Fiscal Year 2026.

Brennan says that especially will not work at the state level, and points at the epic failure of this attempt of magic revenue growth in Kansas from the 2000s.

Tiffany would like you to believe there’s a third option, where the cut magically pays for itself. Kansas believed that story. The result? A $900 million deficit, and Republican lawmakers scrapped the whole idea.

And here’s what should make everyone angry. Either way, the people at the very top win. Wisconsin’s income tax is the one part of our system where people who earn more pay more. Erase it, and the biggest windfall goes straight to our wealthiest residents (the ones who have poured millions into the Tiffany campaign), while everyone else picks up the tab. We’ve seen this playbook before. In Washington, Tiffany voted for a bill that cut Medicaid by nearly a trillion dollars over the next decade while handing out massive tax breaks at the top. Now he wants to bring that same deal to Wisconsin.

But that's not the only way Tiffany believes in magic to pay for spending. In last night's debate, Wispolitics notes that Tiffany said "he wasn’t open to new user fees, tolling or indexing the gas tax for inflation." However, Tiffany still insisted roads and other transportation would be invested in.

Tiffany insisted he would still be able to put more money into transportation, saying he did it while in the Legislature.

“We are going to put additional money into transportation,” Tiffany vowed.

May I also add that Tiffany and the rest of his GOP colleagues in Congress don't have a highway bill in place to continue the added federal assistance that was part of the Biden-era infrastructure act, so we may also be seeing less assistance for transportation coming down from DC.

Which means Tom Tiffany's transportation funding plan echoes the debt-ridden era of Scottholes in Wisconsin, which Tiffany was part of when he was in the State Legislature.

Yeah, that type of fantasyland poserdom didn't work out for us in the 2010s, and we don't need it in the 2020s.

I'll let Dan Shafer of the Recombobulation Area have the last word on how empty Tiffany's tax and spending plans are.

[image or embed]

— Dan Shafer (@danshafer.bsky.social) October 21, 2026 at 10:38 PM

"No tax on tips/OT" goes farther in Wisconsin, but maybe there's a better way to help working people

One thing Tom Tiffany keeps promising is that if Wisconsinites are dumb enough to vote him in as Governor, he will ask for the same tax exemption for tips and OT premium pay at the state level that he voted for as part of Tax Scam 2.0 in Congress.

Possibly with that in mind, Forward Analytics (FA) examined how a Wisconsin-based exemption for tips and OT income would look in a report they issued earlier this month. FA says that one important difference is when that tips and OT subtraction would be calculated at the state level, which would reduce a Wisconsinite’s Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), while the Federal exemption comes after AGI is totaled. Forward Analytics says this means a Wisconsin deduction would get extra bang for the buck.

Because the Wisconsin proposal would have created its subtraction inside the calculation of state AGI — rather than after it, as the federal deduction does — claiming the tips or overtime subtraction removes that income from a filer’s tax base and also lowers the state AGI that determines how large a standard deduction the filer is entitled to.

A lower state AGI produces a larger standard deduction. A filer who claims the tips or overtime subtraction therefore receives two benefits from a single dollar of exempted income: the direct exclusion of that dollar from taxable income and an indirect increase in the standard deduction available on the rest of their income. Federally, no equivalent second effect exists — the standard deduction is a fixed amount and is not impacted by the “no tax on tips or overtime” deduction.

To give you a visual on that, here’s how Wisconsin’s standard deduction works, based on the 2025 state income tax tables, and how it eventually phases out.

See how Wisconsin's standard deduction starts falling after a certain amount of income? That also means that if you move left along that line, the decline in taxable income from other deductions is larger than dollar-for-dollar. It would lead to a significant tax benefit if you are one of those tipped employees in that range of income, you are in essence getting a double deduction .

It also means certain professions would pay more taxes than others, even at the same incomes, as FA illustrates in the following chart.

So you'd have unintended consequences of making it more lucrative to wait tables or be in unionized manufacturing vs taking office jobs, and pay should have to be adjusted higher for the jobs that don't have those double deductions. While I'm down with encouraging more people to unionize and demand OT pay, I bet Tom Tiffany and his donors sure don't want that.

And yes, Tom Tiffany voted for "right-to-be-screwed" in the Legislature in 2015.

Forward Analytics also mentions the price tag of those exemptions, which isn't as much as the several hundred million a year that the 10% cut in taxes that Tiffany is also asking for (see this post for more on that), but it still is well into 9 figures a year.

In May of 2026, the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) released estimated effects of the “no tax on tips and overtime” proposal for the next two fiscal years. In 2026-27, LFB projected a reduction in individual income tax collections of $232.8 million ($179.9 million in overtime and $52.9 million in tipped income). For 2027- 28, they projected a reduction of $197 million ($148.1 million in overtime and $48.9 in tipped income).

It was higher in 2026-27 because year 1 would account for larger tax refunds in Spring 2027, since it would be a year-long deduction that hadn't been adjusted for in the first part of 2026, and also be in effect through the end of FY 2027 on June 30, 2027.

With that in mind, we'd likely see something at or above the $232.8 million figure for 2027-28 if it was passed in the next budget. The FA looks ahead from that, and shows how the amount of the writeoffs would expand as years and wages (hopefully) go up.

Using historical data, we estimated annual wage growth for the next decade and combined these estimates with an attrition rate (which accounts for a subset of workers who would meet the maximum allowed deduction). We also calculated employment growth in each sector (starting from a base of nearly 600,000 tipped workers and 1.2 million overtime eligible workers) using a similar process.

By 2037, the loss in annual tax revenue is projected to rise to $118 million from the tipped income deduction and $234 million from overtime income. A full breakdown of the yearly revenue amounts can be seen in Figure 2. In total, Wisconsin could expect to lose $2.7 billion in tax revenue between 2028 and 2037.

The price tag doesn't mean we shouldn't necessarily give some help to those in tipped-wage professions and give financial benefits to jobs that have OT. But it also isn't free, and with increasingly tighter budgets coming due to higher costs with inflation and less assistance coming down from DC, we need to keep it in mind.

But I got a better idea on how to help these workers and others. Why not raise Wisconsin's tipped wage from the absurd $2.33 an hour it is today and instead make it something like $7.50 while raising our non-tipped wage to $15 an hour or more. Heck, I'd prefer if we just paid a high base wage for those jobs and only have tips as a bonus, but I know that won't happen, so this is a good compromise.

And maybe going back to something Presidents Obama and Biden did and increasing the number of jobs that get overtime. Having more OT pay reflected on regular paychecks would be a better option than a costly gimmick where the "half" of time-and-a-half only gets refunded with someone's tax returns several months later.

In addition, all those tax cuts don't mean a thing if everyday life becomes more costly. Maybe we should be expanding BadgerCare and allowing people of all income levels to buy into it for their coverage if they so choose (as David Crowley has asked for). And maybe we need to restore funding to Child Care Counts that WisGOPs in the Legislature allowed to expire, to allow for more options for working parents and to make it easier for them to get by.

Just file these ideas and number away ahead of this week's debate, and know just what "no tax on tips" will or won't do. And maybe we should be using some of our state surplus to cut taxes in a different way, by paying down property taxes and wheel taxes that are taking an increasing bite out of Wisconsinites' available funds, while also maintaining services to allow for a strong quality of life in our communities.