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.