Upon review, here are more election notes and figures

I wanted to add a couple of other pieces of data from the Dem Governor’s primary that give a good insight as to how things ended up as they did.

First, I want to give Marquette Professor John Johnson’s analysis of the votes in Milwaukee County. Johnson notes that there were strong similarities between Tuesday’s results and another time Crowley won a nail-biter.

In both campaigns, Crowley (a moderate Democrat) faced off against a progressive challenger running clearly to his left. In 2020, this challenger was State Senator Chris Larson, whose district covers the east side of Milwaukee. In 2026, his main opponent, Francesca Hong, was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (and endorsed by Larson).

To a remarkable degree, Hong and Larson won similar parts of Milwaukee County in their respective campaigns against Crowley.

Within the city, Crowley’s significant sources of votes in either election were the majority Black north side along with some of the more conservative, majority white neighborhoods on the city’s western fringe. Hong and Larson won everywhere else, with particular strength in the liberal strongholds between I-43 and Lake Michigan. This progressive strength also extended into adjacent suburbs including St. Francis, Shorewood, Cudahy, and South Milwaukee—all places where Crowley trailed both Hong and Larson.

However, Crowley handily won a different set of suburbs. On the north shore, he carried River Hills, Bayside, and Brown Deer. To the southwest, he won Greenfield, Greendale, Franklin, and Hales Corners. His support grew the most on the north shore between these two elections. For example, he ever-so-slightly lost Fox Point to Larson in 2020, but he defeated Hong in that wealthy suburb by more than 25 points.

This complements the double-digit wins for Crowley over Hong in the suburban WOW Counties next to Milwaukee. These are places that have made the strongest turns toward Democrats in the Trump era, and that’s part of the reason that two of the biggest winners of Tuesday’s election may be Dem Senate Leader Dianne Hesselbein and Dem Assembly Leader Greta Neubauer (even though they won’t ever admit this publicly).

That’s because WisDem consultant Joe Zepecki told the New Republic’s Greg Sargent that the best places for Crowley in the primary are many of the communities where Dems are most likely to pick up seats in this November’s races in the Wisconsin Legislature.

“Crowley’s path to victory runs through suburban Wisconsin and through holding down Republican margins in rural communities. That overlaps with exactly where Dems need to win state legislative seats to get the trifecta next year.” Wisconsin Dem strategist, quoted in this piece:

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— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) August 13, 2026 at 6:37 AM

The total number of votes in the WOW Counties also gave them an increased influence on the 2026 Dem Guv primary compared to the contested one that Tony Evers won in 2018. Total votes were up by 47% compared in the Dem Guv primary this week vs 8 years, but the WOW Counties were up even more than that, jumping by 83%.

This translates into the WOW Counties having a larger share of the votes in the 2026 primary, and the City of Milwaukee having a smaller one (even though the City had its turnout go up by 17,000 compared to 2018).

But why did the polls not catch on to Crowley’s increasing chances of getting more votes than Hong? That’s what G. Elliot Morris looked into, as he gave data to one of the pollsters that had Hong up 20+ points.

Last year, a non-profit called State Navigate contracted me to develop a flexible survey weighting program that they could use on any poll of a statewide or state legislative district primary or general election. This program let them adjust the data they got back in their polls to be representative of the population they were trying to sample.

I did not ask for money from State Navigate, but instead to have access to the raw data and to be able to analyze it publicly for posts like these. State Navigate has agreed to let me publish the analysis below. I did not share it with them beforehand. (For what it’s worth, State Navigate was the most accurate pollster in both the Virginia and New Jersey governor elections in 2025.)

Based on the analysis below, I conclude:
· Most of the miss in polls in Wisconsin is attributable to faulty demographic targets (too many young people). This inflated Hong’s vote margin by about 10 points.

· My best guess is that the race moved 6 points toward Crowley after pollsters released their final surveys.

· Non-ignorable non-response within demographic categories likely further inflated Hong’s vote margin by 2 points.

Which means that a theory the Crowley campaign had before the election turned out to be true – that polls were missing the reality that primary voters skew older, and that was a group he was likely to do better with.

So 3 days after that stunning result, we can see how it happened. And I can't think that Crowley would lose many of Hong's voters, given that she tended to do best in the areas and demos where Dems do strongest. Combine that with Crowley's strong performance among suburban and more rural areas, that may give him a better baseline to start from when it comes to cutting into GOP margins this November, and in turning areas that are up for grabs toward the Dems.

Tuesday was a BAD Election Night for the Tiffany campaign for these reasons, and no wonder why they were thrown off their game by the result. They don't have anything to run on themselves, especially when the Republican candidate has blindly supported everything that an unpopular President has done in the last 19 months. So they need voters to be scared of the Dem candidate for them to have a chance. When the media-described "moderate" wins and is powered to victory by groups of voters and areas of the state that are already trending toward the Dems, it makes it a lot harder for GOPs to win with that "scare dumb people" strategy.