The Recount: There are only two possible outcomes: 1) confirmation of the political position of a plurality of Wisconsin voters or 2) election fraud on a scale not previously seen, at least not anytime recent which would be in the past hundred years or so. The latter outcome would shake the entire US electoral system. The former should shake the Democratic Party to wake up and smell the coffee.
My guesstimate of the odds that it’s #2 is much lower than the pre-election odds for a Trump win. The numbers simply don’t support a plot to fix the vote in WI because it would have to involved all but four counties. And two of those four are solid Republican counties. Let’s walk through the numbers.
2012:
Obama: 1,613,915
Romney: 1,408,746
Total: 3,022,696 votes cast for the two major political party’s nominees.
Winning vote margin: 205,204
2016:
Clinton: 1,382,120
Trump: 1,410,458
Total: 2,702,578
Winning vote margin: 28,338
Voter participation on the presidential ballot line in 2016 was down by 110,310 compared to that of 2012. That’s a little more than half of Obama’s 2012 vote margin of 205,204. What can’t be known is the actual number of 2012 voters that passed on 2016 and who they voted for in 2012. What is known is that the drop-off/drop-out occurred in almost all WI counties, regardless of which candidate won the county in 2012.
Could that net drop-off (newly eligible voters less newly dead previous voters) reflect the impact of Wisconsin’s new voter ID requirements? Sure. However, as the drop-off/drop-out voters in 2016 were not limited to states with voter suppression efforts that case is weak at best. In addition, GOP voter suppression targets the poor and POC most likely to vote Democratic and therefore, the impact would have to be seen most dramatically in communities with high numbers of poor, POC, and Democratic voters. No evidence of that in the WI numbers.
For example: Waukesha county. Suburban, white, not poor, and solidly Republican. Election results:
2012:
Obama: 77,617
Romney: 161,567
other: 1,900
total votes: 241,084
2016:
Clinton: 79,199
Trump: 145,519
other: 11,551
total votes: 236,269
A decline in total voters and Clinton received more votes than Obama in 2012 and Trump received fewer votes than Romney. Also note that the decline for Trump was larger than the increased number of third party voters. Thus, Clinton had to have gotten some Romney voters in numbers greater than a loss to GRN voters. This was precisely the strategy of Clinton’s campaign. Peel off middle-class, white, suburban Romney voters by highlighting the degree to which Trump is disgusting. Two problems with that strategy: 1) voters in this demographic are as reliably GOP voters as AAs are Dem voters. 2) secondarily, voters in such communities have a high vested interest in maintaining the status quo over “change.” Had Clinton pushed harder on being the status quo candidate, she might have gotten more Waukesha county votes, but for every vote gain there, she would have lost an equal or larger number of “change” voters elsewhere.
Another example: Dane County. Less white, less wealthy, high public employment (IOW more job security), and reliably Democratic. (An obvious target for the Scott Walker administration.)
2012:
Obama: 215,389
Romney: 83,459
other: 3,997
total votes: 302,845
2016:
Clinton: 217,506
Trump: 71,270
other: 15,953
total votes: 304,729
So, in two out of the three largest counties in WI, Clinton did better than Obama. How about the largest county, Milwaukee?
2012:
Obama: 328,090
Romney: 158,430
other: 4,424
total votes: 490,944
2016:
Clinton: 288,986
Trump: 126,901
other: 19,893
total votes: 434,970
Aha!? Uh, no. Trump’s net gain in Milwaukee County over Mitt’s performance was only 6,765 votes, and recall he needed a statewide gain of 205,204 plus one and Dane and Waukesha put him another 28,237 votes behind Mitt. The number of votes in all but eleven counties was down from that of 2012. The pattern seen in most counties is similar to that of tiny Florence county:
2012:
Obama: 952
Romney: 1,643
other: 20
total votes: 2,615
2016:
Clinton: 666
Trump: 1897
other: 88
total votes: 2,651
Didn’t matter if the total number of votes increased or declined or the county went Democratic or Republican in 2012. In the aggregate, Trump held the Romney’s vote totals and Clinton didn’t hold Obama’s vote totals.
Interestingly, in those counties where Trump had gains over Romney’s number, Feingold posted better numbers than Clinton. Alas, not as good as Obama’s ’12 numbers. However, it could have been good enough. In those counties where Feingold received more votes than Clinton (all but seventeen counties), we see:
Net drop-off/opt-out on Senate ballot line = 1,619
====
Trump: 666,544
Johnson: 667,122
===
Clinton: 671,479
Stein: 16,334
(total Clinton and Stein = 687,813)
Feingold: 699,909
===
LIB & crank on POTUS line: 59,246
LIB on Senate line: 45,137
(total Trump and net LIB & crank = 680,642)
Johnson: 667,122
Thus, Feingold had to have picked up some of those Trump, LIB, and/or crank voters in those counties. With regard to the counties where Clinton did better than Feingold (The Seventeen), the pattern was different:
Net drop-off/opt-out on Senate ballot line = -7,706 (an increase for senate line voters)
====
Trump: 743,914
Johnson: 812,141
===
Clinton: 710,541
Stein: 14,646
(total Clinton and Stein = 725,287)
Feingold: 680,597
===
LIB & crank on POTUS line: 63,397
LIB on Senate line: 42,154
(total Trump and Net gain LIB & Crank = 746,530)
Clearly, Johnson picked up Clinton voters in these counties. In these counties, had Johnson been limited to the Trump plus the net LIB and crank votes and had Feingold held the Clinton and Stein votes, Feingold would have won.
If you’re wondering how the 2016 senate vote in these counties compared with the 2010 senate vote, the answer is about the same. Feingold carried the aggregate of the same counties in 2010 and 2016. Clinton also won by 4,935 votes in Feingold Country.
So, how did Obama fare with the same split in the WI counties?
2012 Feingold Country:
Obama: 795.405
Romney: 617,989
Obama vote Margin: 177,416
===
2012 The Seventeen:
Obama: 818,545
Romney: 790,757
Obama vote margin: 27,788
====
2016 Feingold Country
Clinton vote margin: 4,935 (total votes shed 172,481)
2016 The Seventeen:
Trump vote margin: 33,273 (total votes shed by Clinton 61,061)
I can wrap my head around why there were a couple hundred thousand Obama ’12 voters that went with Trump in ’16. I can also wrap my head around Stein voters choosing Feingold. Also the twelve thousand in Feingold Country that went with Trump, LIB, or crank and Feingold for Senate. What doesn’t compute for me are the (roughly) forty thousand plus Clinton voters in “The Seventeen” that chose Johnson over Feingold. Were they “divided government” fetishists? IOW, if Clinton were to win (as everyone expected), they preferred a WI GOP Senator to keep her in check. If Trump had been the expected winner, would they have preferred a WI Democratic Senator to keep Trump in check? Voter overthink? Or dare I suggest that there was some vote theft from Feingold to Johnson in The Seventeen. (Isolated to a few counties and at variance with the pattern of the other counties. This is how a vote theft operation would appear in the results. Not that such a deviation is evidence of vote theft or is unnatural.)
What this little exercise reveals to me is that Feingold’s pre-election poll numbers, consistently near or over 50% were probably accurate as to voter intent. Then as they soured on Clinton, they took it out on Feingold. Hillary, the anti-coattail wonder.
Note: Most of numbers were pulled from the Wisconsin Elections Commission website Those pulled from other sources differed by a few votes but not enough for me to redo my spreadsheets.
It’s the Water. Or the Wealth. Or something something.
The Seventeen may qualify as “Walker Country,” but I haven’t run any numbers of that; so, will stick with The Seventeen. Fifteen are the along the eastern side of WI, either on the water or contiguous to a county on the water, and run from north to south. One is tiny and north central and one is western central. The range in median income from #1 to #72 (last place).
Income rank in WI
#1 – Ozaukee
#2 – Waukesha
#5 – Washington
#6 – Door
#8 – Calumet
#11- Outagamie
#12- Brown
#13- Walworth
========
#15- Winnebago
#16- Racine
#17- Pierce
#18- Kenosha
#21- Fond Du Lac
#22- Manitowac
#24- Sheboygan
#40- Milwaukee
#72- Menominee
The Wisconsin statewide median income is at the break above Winnebago. So, The Seventeen do skew towards the upper and middle income range.
As Clinton only carried one county in the 2016 primary, Milwaukee, there’s no correlation from that to disfavoring Feingold in the Senate race. And overall, the counties where she did better in the primary don’t predict The Seventeen either.
Of The Seventeen in the general election, Clinton carried Menominee and Milwaukee.