LDI Liveblog: Wisconsin Senate Recalls, Round 2

Welcome to tonight's Legislative District Index liveblog. We've been spending all week fine-tuning the LDI projection machine since it's debut performance last week, and we are excited to kick off our second election night liveblog. Tonight, Democrats have to go on the defensive in the 12th & 22nd Wisconsin Senate districts, where Republicans mounted recall efforts in response to the recalls brought against six Republican state senators. This isn't the first Democratic recall election - Sen. Dave Hansen easily bested his Republican opponent David VanderLeest a few weeks ago, but tonight's elections figure to be much tighter than that contest.

I previewed the two races in greater depth yesterday, but as a brief highlight, Democrats are fairly heavily favored to maintain control of the 22nd district, which is marginally Democratic, but nowhere near as Republican as the districts that Democrats just narrowly lost last week. The 12th district figures to be the real marquee contest, as polling has showed Democratic incumbent Jim Holperin with anywhere from a 2% to 14% edge of his tea-flavored challenger.

Tonight's elections cannot change control of the chamber, but what they certainly could do is provide a messaging boost to either side. Republicans tried to claim a huge victory last week despite losing two seats - striking out tonight might force them to eat their words a bit more, and propel Democrats whose inflated expectations were popped last week when they failed to flip the chamber. On the other hand, a Republican victory might be the nail in the coffin of the recall saga. Regardless of the outcome, we will be here all night giving you the best information, and hopefully providing you with some good news.

9:00 PM


Here are tonight's first projections - the model is working off the assumption that the shift we're going to see towards Democrats will be the same as last week - of course, as precincts come in, we'll see those numbers move.

9:23 PM
With only one precinct in, it appears a little early to draw any conclusions... and by that I mean literally one precinct is totally worthless to base decisions off on.

9:38 PM
We've now got a handful of precincts in, appears rural at this point. Don't read too much into the 22nd - it is still early, and with so much of the district in just one county, there aren't too many data point for the district to work with at this stage. In the 12th however, early news appears to be good - while it hasn't made a dent in the projection yet, numbers are improving thus far for Sen. Holperin at the kind of level he would need to claim victory.


9:45 PM
More numbers coming in from the 12th district, and thus far all the movement has been positive - in every county that is reporting, Sen. Holperin is performing at the level he needs to in order to win, and that is reflected in the movement of the LDI projection. Meanwhile, projections are still off in the 22nd district, where the conservative portions of Kenosha that have reported are preventing the system to give accurate data yet - another 10 precincts and it should be dialed in much closer.


9:57 PM
People are talking on Twitter about the 22nd having been called by the Associated Press - I haven't seen that yet, but I'll update the information the moment I know more. The LDI is seeing progress in the 22nd, where things are moving back towards where they are expected to be, but in the 12th, Marathon and Marientte are not where Sen. Holperin needs them to be, and that movement is reflected in the slight change in projections.


10:04 PM
For the first time tonight, the LDI is projecting that Sen. Holperin will win re-election in the 12th district, on the back of his great performance thus far in Onieda County. Kenosha still remaining a mystery at this point, but the news from the 12th has to be promising given the relative liberality of the 22nd in comparison.


10:14 PM
Numbers still looking good for Holperin in the 12th, even though his lead has receded in some places. In the 22nd, things are still perplexing for Wirch - with no indication of what parts of Kenosha are in, it is really difficult to say whether we should start being seriously concerned. Way too much of the vote remains out there.


10:18 PM
For the first time tonight we have both Democrats now ahead, and Wirch may be about to take this one across the finish lines, if precincts keep looking the way those last few did. Holperin, on the other hand, has begun slowing down, and if his Onieda numbers continue to dwindle, will go back to being on the other end of our projections - let's hope it doesn't continue.


10:28 PM
We are now confident that Robert Wirch will be returned to the Wisconsin State Senate by the voters of Senate District 22. Holperin remains in the balance however, with recent numbers continuing to do more to inspire fear rather than confidence.


10:40 PM
We are really just sitting and waiting to see more from SD12 at this stage. I was talking on Twitter earlier that if Holperin can outperform his district at the rate Wirch outperformed his, than he will be safe, but as Wirch's numbers continue to take off, he may not even have to do that well to retain his seat. Still, all the recent movement in the 12th has been making victory tougher, rather than easier - we're going to be biting our fingernails for a while here.


10:48 PM
The numbers in Vilas County are great for Holperin, and I'm getting pretty close to calling this one a night - finishing out Onieda County will be the real end of the whole process. But right now, feeling a little more bullish about Holperin's odds.


10:52 PM
We are calling this one for Jim Holperin - data has come in for enough counties for us to be confident that Sen. Holperin will not only defend his seat, but outperform his 2008 election - and that is nothing to sneeze at.


11:02 PM
We are calling it a night - two great wins for Dems, and by excellent margins. We'll recap tomorrow - enjoy the rest of the night!

Democrats Favored in Final Recalls - But Don't Hold Your Breath

This time last week, everyone was getting their hopes up over the possibility of a big night for Wisconsin Democrats in the first round of recall elections. While Democrats scored two important victories, it ultimately was not enough to satisfy the inflated expectations that had spread within the progressive community, and left many, myself included, suggesting alternate routes that Wisconsin Democrats should take if they want to successfully remove Governor Scott Walker from power. While it is too early to tell if any wholesale strategy changes are going to happen, tomorrow night will provide an excellent opportunity for Democrats to see how much their base was shaken by the losses last week, as two Democratic state senators will face recall challenges tomorrow night. We will be here liveblogging the results as they come in, same as last week, but before you head into the election night fray, here are some things you need to know about the two seats up for grabs.



The Districts
The 12th District is going to be the real showdown tomorrow night. Senator Jim Holperin was representing the most Republican district held by a Democrat until Jessica King's win last week, and he didn't do it in a landslide either; Holperin's 2008 campaign for an open state senate seat prevailed with only 51% of the vote. To put his district into further perspective, Holperin's seat is split between Sean Duffy's 7th Congressional District and Reid Ribble's 8th Congressional District, two seats that flipped in favor of Republicans last cycle.

Holperin doesn't have some of the advantages one would typically like to see in a race like this one. His Senate race in 2008 was his only campaign for elected office in the past 20 years, having served in the state assembly back in the early 80's. While he held an appointed position in former Governor Jim Doyle's administration, I would challenge any of my readers to name their state's respective Tourism Secretary of the top of their head.

What Holperin doesn't bring in electoral background he does make up for in support. He's earned the endorsement of the NRA in this recall, backing that is really vital in a seat like this that is more than capable of electing a conservative. Another thing in his favor is his opponent, Kim Simac, who is of the firebreathing variety. While her message has been effective in getting the Republican base to do the legwork needed on this recall, I'm not sure how well that language is going to play when it comes to converting people who voted for Holperin last time around to change colors and kick him out. Using the raw 50/50 data from the LDI model, this race would have a slight Republican advantage, but to calculate the projections for these two races, we are also adding the average swing we observed last week - 3% in the Democrats favor - to the model. The result is that the LDI is projecting this race out to a nearly 50-50 tossup, and I'd say intuitively, that seems about fair - there is really no way to project how people in the district have reacted to last week's results.

The 22nd District won't get as much time, simply because it really doesn't need it. The district, represented by Senator Robert Wirsch, is substantially more democratic than his colleagues, and he appears to face a lower-tier challenger. The LDI projection model is pointing to a 55-45 victory for him, but I wouldn't be surprised if that figure ends up being low - we may be looking at a result closer to what happened in the 30th district general, where Senator Dave Hansen really beat up on Republican challenger David VanderLeest and took two-thirds of the vote.

Today, Daily Kos Elections released the results of polls done by PPP this weekend that show double-digit margins for both Democratic candidates, and with their record in the recalls thus far, I would be inclined to trust their numbers. That said, my intuition is that they have located the high water mark for Sen. Holperin, where as Sen. Wirsch may have room to expand that lead.

We will be back tomorrow night, cranking up the LDI projection engine and hopefully watching two Democratic senators coast to victory to close off the Wisconsin summer recalls in style.

Why We Won in Wisconsin

Last night's liveblog was wildly successful for the Legislative District Index - while we blew by our single-day page views record, the real first version of the LDI projection model was surprisingly on target. Consider the 10:48 update, which I have reposted below: at this early stage of the night, we had called all six races correctly, and other than the 18th, where a computation error in the model was inflating Democratic numbers, we were within 3% of the margin of victory. I'll be making a few changes to improve the model prior to next Tuesday's results, but as a projection model, I was incredibly impressed with the LDI's performance.



However, the real story I want to tell is about what happened last night at the polls in Wisconsin. I don't think there is any question that the narrative forming last night and solidified today is that Democrats "came up short". Given what has been talked about, I don't think that is an unfair label to put on last night. The real problem is that when you look at the actual numbers, last night was incredibly successful.

Expectations were managed horribly for last night's recall elections, and for that matter, the entire anti-Walker electoral movement. A state supreme court election should have never been allowed to become a referendum on Walker - Democrats had to split energy and focus on a race that was not as important as the legislatives races last night. On top of that, the notion that we were going to really stick it to Republicans tonight and pick up four, five, or all six of these seats had no grounding in reality, but became way too commonplace among people on the left.

Consider the following - Senator-elect Jessica King will represent the most conservative Senate district held by a Democrat in the state of Wisconsin - a district that she came up short in during the 2008 wave, in an off-year special election. That is a huge achievement. Had we won the other seats that were up in the recall, nearly a third of the Wisconsin Senate Democratic Caucus would have come from districts that are typically safe for Republicans. There isn't a state where Democrats regularly win seats like these.



The other important takeaway from the above chart should be the Republicans listed above those who were on the ballot last night. Those are the Senators whose seats we could have flipped. If we take the D+3% shift we measured last night, and apply it to those races, we would have won four of those seven races - and that is without considering that in more moderate districts, the Republican base might not have been large enough to combat the Democratic surge. But we did not get to flip those seats last night because we lost in 2010. State legislative elections are an inigma - some people talk about them like they are the hardest things to fight against the current in, others think they are the easiest seats to flip. If you took 25% of the money, energy, and effort that was spent on these recalls, and focused it into those 2010 State Senate races, my guess is tonight we would be talking about a Democratic-controlled Senate - we may have never even needed the recall elections to get there.

The point I am trying to hammer home is that these races are critically important, and it seems that Republicans have been much better at nationally at maintaining focus on state legislatures and building their bench to be prepared the moment that the national mood sours on their opponents. Democrats need to create vehicles that can respond just as quickly in the other direction, so that we can continue to have state piloting the progressive policies of tomorrow.

If Democrats are considering pushing on with the recall strategy, I would offer this suggestion: forget about Scott Walker - a losing recall campaign will only embolden him, and quite frankly I don't see how he would lose in such a contest - wait until he's up for re-election, and punish him them. Instead, circulate petitions in the 5th, 17th, 21st, and 23rd districts. These are seats Democrats will be competitive in without any sort of outside push, and if they can maintain just the slightest bit of outside momentum (which, I would tend to believe that continued Koch support to Wisconsin Republicans is sure to do), they'll be able to be twice as competitive as they were tonight, and successfully grab control from the Senate Republicans.

But Democrats have a big enough task on the table already - defending their two Senate seats that are up for recall next week. Robert Wirsch in the 22nd district shouldn't be in any real risk - his district is closest to Kapanke's, without having the incumbency advantage on the Republican side. Jim Holperin, however, represents a districts that is only slightly less conservative than the Republican block challenged last night, and has a challenger in Kim Simac whose politics are regressive enough that a victory could really sap all the energy out of this movement. Don't lose faith - hit the phones, drive out if you can, and make sure the summer recalls end on our terms.

LDI Liveblog: Wisconsin Senate Recalls, Round 1

FINAL UPDATE - 12:48 AM

With election returns completely stalled in Senate District 8 for some time now, and no indication of that changing anytime soon, we're calling it a night here at the LDI Newsdesk. Tonight was a victory for Democrats, no mistake about it. These were seriously conservative districts - Senate District 18, where Democrats successfully recalled State Sen. Randy Hopper, is the 8th most conservative district in Wisconsin. A lot of money poured into these races, and the fake Dem strategy really appears to have paid dividends for Republicans - the extra time they added to the race may have been just enough to combat the narrative. But Democrats have picked up two important seats, have a slim chance of picking up a third, and have demonstrated that the Democratic machine can still turn out voters when they are revved up. The D+3 shift we saw tonight would not be enough to knock off Governor Scott Walker however, and so if Wisconsin Dems are serious about mounting a recall effort against him next year, they are going to really have to be on top of their game, as this shift would've still let Walker win by 3%. We'll have a more complete reflection tomorrow, and be sure to bookmark this page for next week, when Democrats have to play defense in two recall elections. Lastly, this evening was our most successful night, smashing all of our traffic records - thanks for relying on the LDI for your legislative election coverage, and please let us know what we can do to make the experience even better in the future.

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Welcome to the first ever Legislative District Index liveblog. Tonight, we're going to providing minute-by-minute coverage of the election returns in the six contested Wisconsin senate seats. it will be fun to get back into the liveblog business - last time I was a part of one was when I covered that odd 10PM tweet from the White House about the President addressing the nation.

First of all, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you to also open up a page for Daily Kos Elections tonight - I've been going there for all my liveblog needs for some time, and the folks over at SSP Labs have put together some incredible data, which I would strongly encourage everyone take a look at before the polls close.

I'm going to be focusing tonight on projecting election results using the Legislative District Index formula. In the past, I've written about the six senate districts that are going to be contested tonight, but just as a friendly reminder, here's the Wisconsin Senate scores, with the contested seats shaded in grey.

As I've said from the start, this is a serious uphill battle for Democrats, were this any other election. But tonight's election has little precedent - never has a state legislative campaign been conducted with such fervor and outside attention. Part of what we'll be measuring tonight is the progressive shift - the percentage swing we see towards the Democratic candidates away from LDI's expectations. I say progressive because this is fundamentally a campaign being waged over progressive values - collective bargaining, education, progressive taxation, and social programs. The other part that is worth taking note of is the fact that there will be a progressive shift - all the polling of these senate races thus far has shown them to be extremely close, which compared to what results the LDI would project.

So, keep up to date on this space - as soon as the first results trickle in, our projections will pour out


9:07 PM
Polls have been closed for almost 10 minutes now, though there are plenty of reports on Twitter of people still in line to vote - they'll all be allowed to. May be a while before we see our first results. Projections will be going here, at the bottom of the page chronologically, but I'll also be updating the top with a "big board" of results - just need some preliminary numbers to put those up!

9:38 PM
It has taken a while for results to start coming in, but here is what we have so far. Note that there hasn't been enough precincts in District 8 for my model to start using it - remember though that even now, there is a TON of noise in the model, as so few districts are in - I wouldn't take these results to be indicative of anything, but I want to show everyone how I'll be presenting numbers tonight.


9:57 PM
A few more results have trickled in, and now there are numbers for all 6 districts. Right now we're seeing a 10% Republican shift in the districts we've surveyed, but keep in mind - we are expecting rural, conservative areas to report first. If turnout was as robust as some had said, then we could be waiting a while to get to the Democratic pockets in all of these counties.


10:11 PM
Starting to look REALLY ugly for Democrats, as a considerable number of votes are in, and some of these races aren't even close. Republicans are outperforming their LDI score in 4 of the 6 races, the exact opposite of the scenario that Democrats needed. Things need to change, and fast, for there to be any hope of a positive result this evening.


10:22 PM
The game is changing slightly - now I've got Dems outperforming LDI #'s in 4 of the 6 districts, but only enough to win two of the seats (8 & 32). Still, there is reason for optimism.


10:33 PM
Two of the six races have now been officially called for the GOP. What is troubling at this hour is the fact that overall, we are measuring absolutely 0 shift towards Democrats in the recall, which really has been totally unthinkable this entire campaign. Dems continue to outperform LDI scores in 4 districts, and are increasing their margins, but our projections still show 4 nailbiters. The one thing to be hopefuly about is that later returns in 14 continue to favor Dems, and in 18, a huge number of votes aren't out yet in the strongest Democratic area of the district. If there is a Democratic surge within that base, we might be in for a twist.


10:48 PM
A few things have shifted since the last update - the model is now really excited about the pickup opportunity in the 18th district - the only problem is that so much of the vote is still out. The 14th remains close, while the 8th is beginning to drift away from Dems reach. Also, in the 32nd, keep in mind that Kapanke has been seriously outperforming his Senate seat for some time now - so while the shift is only 1% from the LDI score, it is a significant flip from his performance in previous elections.


11:04 PM
A third race has been called for the Republicans, and now things aren't looking good. I can't see any way that the race in the 8th turns around in the Democrats favor - there isn't any part of the district where Democratic numbers seem to have surged. Instead, we appear to be waiting on the proverbial "super turnout delay" that would wind up with us finding a much higher percentage of voters from the remaining precincts than my model imagines. Right now the total shift is only at +2 - incredibly disappointing.


11:11 PM
So we are all down to 2 races - 8 & 18. In 18, the numbers look much more promising - not only does my model project a victory, but across the board Democratic performance has been significantly up. In Senate District 8 however, I'm just not seeing those kind of numbers - we need serious blue ballots to come out of Milwaukee, and that kind of advantage hasn't been established thus far.

11:20 PM
I'm just not feeling all that optimistic about the 8th - I don't have the numbers to back it up. I think the 18th is a lock now - I'd project victory there, but it really is all going to come down to Waukesha - feels like we have said that way too many times in recent history.


11:44 PM
It is all down to the 8th - while I've revised my projection downward in the 18th (due to a little spreadsheet error), more results have come in that have ensured victory over there. All we can do now is wait for the spotlight hogs in Waukesha, and hope for the best


12:10 AM
A lot of Waukesha has come in now, and the result doesn't change the model for Democrats in the 8th. That news is good - the question now becomes whether or not Democrats can rack up a 14,000 margin in Milwaukee. That is doable, but as results have come in across the night, we are seeing Milwaukee county trending away from Democrats, rather than gaining in advantage.


12:29 AM
We're still taking a hard look at the data in the 8th Senate District, where Democrats are going to have a difficult time making a comeback. The numbers from Waukesha County were not terrible for Dems - the fear was that it was going to tilt the county even further in the Republican's favor, but the margin held consistent throughout. It will be extremely interesting to see the results that come out of Menomenee Falls, where they appear to be sitting on the results until tomorrow. There are still 12 outstanding counties in Milwaukee, but this isn't super liberal territory, so finding the votes to flip this race will be incredibly difficult. I'd say there's probably a greater chance at this point of Democrats picking up the seat after a long investigation into the Waukesha County clerk's office rather than winning the vote outright tonight - if the numbers we've been given are true, the votes just aren't out there to be picked up.

Approaching Decision Day - Breaking Down Wisconsin

Well, it has been a while since I last updated - with school around the corner, I have been trying to get things in line on that end, and have also been reflecting on how this website will evolve as my summer research period comes to a halt.

Traffic has been growing on the LDI steadily since this project started, and I am incredibly proud of the product I have put out thus far, which is precisely why I find myself at a bit of an impasse. As of today, I have released indexes for virtually every state that releases easily accessible precinct-level election data, and has been doing so for the past decade.

Unfortunately, that is around 20% of the states, which is not nearly as much as I would like to have complete. But without financial support from anywhere, I struggle not only to afford the time investment it takes to compile this data, but in many cases, I cannot afford to purchase election results from a company like PoliData. With school soon occupying my full-time attention, the opportunity for me to continue to publish new states at the rate I have over the past few months is quickly drying up.

With all that said, this site is far from dead. The fact remains that there are few good places to find electoral analysis and insight for state legislatures. DailyKos Elections and Red Racing Horses both offer far much more in coverage than traditional media outlets have, but both sides are burdened with also covering Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and so one cannot expect to see state legislative elections getting the red carpet treatment.

At my core, I believe state legislatures are the most important battleground for progressive policy - they are the real opportunities for us to innovate, and just as importantly, they present easy opportunities for conservatives to derail this country's progress with regressive policies like the ones we have seen in Wisconsin. They deserve our full attention, and if I can be a place where they receive that kind of coverage, then I want to do everything to make sure I do it right.

So, here's an outline of what to expect from this website as we go forward:

1.) Increased coverage of state legislative elections - profiling legislators and candidates who deserve a platform, providing analysis of general and special elections, results liveblogs, and election wrap-ups.

2.) Continued updates for the states that have all ready been released - as more data comes out regarding redistricting, I'll compile indexes for the new legislative districts in the states we have covered, and update scores after each state goes to the polls.

3.) New states - there are still states (Michigan) that I am working on, as well as others where I have close to all the information I need to publish them. But by prioritizing the above two goals, I can ensure that I'm not releasing states where I am not 100% confident in the numbers I put out, which I think is better for me and better for my readers.

This all starts this week, as tomorrow presents us with one of the most-followed state legislative races I can recall.

Tomorrow night, Wisconsin voters will go the polls in a recall election for six Republican state senators - a week later, two Democratic state senators will face the same test. Democrats need a net gain of three seats in these races in order to flip control of the Senate, and significantly halt the damage Wisconsin Governor Scott Brown has done to the state. But as I have said in past Wisconsin updates, that road forward is not easy - four of the six Republicans on the block are in districts that Republicans are expected to safely win in generic elections.

But this election is anything but generic, and so tomorrow night I'll be updating everyone with data as it comes in. We'll be comparing Democratic performance to the Wisconsin LDI's expectations in every district, trying to measure the size of the anti-Walker wave and what it means for each election so that we can predict the results a little sooner than some of the traditional media outlets.

Fake Dems Fall in Wisconsin

Last night, the six Democrats attempting to win recall elections for the Wisconsin State Senate faced their first electoral challenge, albeit an unusual one. In a classic Walker-inspired maneuver, the Wisconsin GOP (recently headed up by national GOP Chairman Reince Priebus) entered six anti-recall "Democrats" into the races, forcing each challenger to burn money and energy to win a primary. While they certainly would have loved to win, the good luck wasn't with them last night, as the real Democratic candidates won every primary, with all but one race decided by a solid 20% margin.

The only question mark last night was District 10, where Shelley Moore maintained a narrow lead throughout the count, and finished with only 55% of the vote. Moore, a teacher who was laid off as a result of Walker cuts in January, differs from the other Democratic candidates with experience in public office. The choice of Moore as a candidate seemed an inspired one, so long as she could get her name out there. But after last night's performance, I think it is clear that of the six Senate seats, this is one where we might be in a bit of trouble. Moore has to better define herself to the public - she is a perfect symbol of what this entire debate has been about, but if people don't know that, her name recognition is going to sink her on election day.



For reference, above is the district index for the Wisconsin State Senate - recalled Senators are highlighted in Gray. As I said back when this website was first launching, despite the huge populist support in Wisconsin, this was going to be an incredibly tough recall election. Unlike Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, and Michigan - where new Republican governors are watching their popularity tank - Scott Walker still has fervent support, and Republicans are energized to validate his agenda through holding these seats. With the exception of Kapanke's seat, which is a must-win for Democrats, the other five races are an uphill battle - all would be expected to fall Republican if I was just writing a generic election preview. The engagement of the union community since last fall however may understand potential Democratic support in some of these districts, but either way, it is Democrats who have the hill to climb if they are going to win. For Shelley Moore, she is going to need as many people pushing her up that hill as possible.

A Second Look: Revising the Model and Republishing Wisconsin

So - like any ambitious project, the launch hasn't gone off without a few hiccups. My good friends over at DailyKos Elections raised a handful of questions about my Wisconsin Assembly data I posted - important ones that needed answers. So with all that said, I want to offer up some answers to those concerns, and revise the Wisconsin numbers I published earlier this week.

In my first Assembly post, I had identified a Wisconsin (AD-31) seat at Democratic when it really was Republican. Part of the reason I try to get as much public input as possible on this project is because when it comes to state legislatures, it is not always easy to get the most reliable data on the spot. I've crosschecked those lists again, but I am always going to rely on readers to let me know if I've got something wrong - the help is invaluable.

A few other folks started raising concerns about data that didn't line up with their on-the-ground knowledge of Wisconsin. Immediately, I found there were two real causes behind this, both very different in nature.

The first was a simple Excel problem - the dynamic spreadsheet I use to put all my data in was supposed to auto-update in areas, but failed to do so - that quick fix made up for some of the misleading data we were seeing.

The second problem, and the larger one, was one structural with my model. The level of data I use largely depends on how many people the legislators represent - and in most cases, county level data is accurate, and much more efficient than having to go ward by ward for every single seat. My prior exception was only for major American cities, just because they have such a high concentration of districts that if I did not, you would wind up with a chunk of districts all with identical scores - not a very accurate reflection of reality.

During my testing, I look at a wide ideological range of districts to make sure my process was accurate. One thing I failed to account for, however, is the serious urban-minority/suburban-white divide that exists. I use state legislative elections as a local check in the system to account for community differences in party preference - but that simply isn't a strong enough check when the communities have so little in common - economically, ethnically, and politically - with each other. As a result, I've decided that I'm now going go ward-by-ward when possible for all counties over 200,000 residents.

The result is a picture that I think my Wisconsin readers will find as a much more accurate assessment of the two chambers, and will prove a better model for future states. I want to thank everyone who raised concerns and sent questions my way for making it this much better.

Let's talk about the Senate first. In my first projections, I urged caution over getting too optimistic about the recount this summer - other than Sen. Dan Kapanke (SD-32), the rest of the recalled Senators (Ballotpedia has an easy to read list you can use to match names to districts) represent areas that appeared fairly reliably conservative - a major ground change would be required for the Democrats to get the three seats they need in order to flip control of the chamber.



Sen. Kapanke's district (D+6) has moved even further into Democratic territory, and is now the 9th most liberal seat in the Wisconsin Senate. As I'm sure the Senator would attest to, the frustrating thing about recalls is that they really don't offer a graceful political exit - you can't make up an excuse to not run in a race to fill out a term that you previously signed up to serve. And now, a year removed from being a serious challenger for Congress against Rep. Ron Kind, Sen. Kapanke is going to lose his state senate seat - not the desired trajectory for a political career.

However, the effort it will take to claim the two other necessary seats is remains high. As discussed last time, if you apply a universal seven percent swing on the best Democratic result from the fall, Dems would be on track to win a R+4 seat - but my fixes to the index haven't brought the other seats any closer. Commenters have noted that union membership is very uneven across these contested districts - and so the bar to beating Republican support may be lower.

Questions have also been raised about turnout, but my guess is that with all that is at stake, there is going to be some pretty serious mobilization - on both sides - and assuming Democrats are going to have a remarkable turnout advantage seems to be an inappropriate strategy. But between the personal troubles of Randy Hopper (SD-18... before his wife kicked him out and sent him to live in Madison after learning of an affair with an aide) and the varying union membership, flipping control of the Senate appears to be a very attainable objective.

On the house side (name for districts here, you can see the real changes. To start, the most heavily Democratic districts are twice as Democratic as before - they are the heavy minority districts that the previous model was missing out on. It also shows the amount of Democratic votes that are sunk into these seats. Only 42 of the 99 seats are more Democratic than the state on average. The current districts are not an overt gerrymander - they date back to a 1992 compromise plan between then-Governor Tommy Thompson and the Democratic Legislature. In 2002, the districts were merely altered by the courts to balance the population shifts. The result is a fairly high amount of Democratic vote sinks that seem destined to only grow Democrats can grab control of some part of the redistricting process this summer.



Also, I have got some news going forward - over the next few days I will be releasing data for Nebraska and Ohio, where another one of Governor Scott Walker's friends has been running into popularity problems lately, jeopardizing his legislative majorities. I'm also working on embedding spreadsheets into the blog via Google Docs so that people can quickly input the rankings for their own calculations. For updates on the project's progress, and any random questions you want to throw at me, follow my Twitter account, TheLDI.

Wisconsin, Part 2: The General Assembly

EDIT 5/19/2011: This data has been revised, for more information read this article on the changes made to the Wisconsin index.

As promised, here is the results for the Wisconsin General Assembly. I'm not going to do much in the way of commentary on this one - though it is worth noting that the 94th - where a Democrat just recently won a special election, was considered a relatively liberal district by my model to begin with, despite its longtime Republican hold.

In the coming days, I'll be updating the site so that you can navigate state-by-state, and get just the data you are looking for. I'm also considered setting up a Google Doc so that readers can get this information for their own research.

Would love to know your thoughts in the comments.

-Matt

A look at the recall: The Wisconsin District Index

EDIT 5/19/2011: This data has been revised, for more information read this article on the changes made to the Wisconsin index.

First things first, the data:

Now, time for some explanation:

If there is one thing that Wisconsin's state legislative standoff has taught us, it is that state legislative politics don't receive nearly as much attention as they deserve.  In a very brief span of time, Wisconsin Republicans came close to completely wiping out important rights for a large expanse of Wisconsinites.  Since the news broke, I think it's fair to say that people have seemed a lot more interested in what is happening in state capitols - these are not trivial battlegrounds.

A few week back, I had the pleasure of listening to Rachel Maddow speak, and one of the things Ms. Maddow touched on was that it seems as though there is really a heightened interest in these issues that we used to consider "local" politics.  Not only did the significance of these stories merit their coverage, but frankly, there appears to be a growing audience for these types of political issues.

For the past two years now, I've been trying to build something that would give a framework to these conversations about state legislative politics.  While I'm a still in the midst of working on the data, there are a few pockets that are all ready complete, and given the interest in what's happening in Wisconsin, I wanted to share them with you guys as soon as possible.

It is called the Legislative District Index.  This ranking system functions as a more nuanced version of the Cook PVI, trying to account for differences between state and national parties, and in the hopes that I can create a common language to discuss state legislative seats.

The ranking is a weighted average of three presidential elections, two gubernatorial races, and then the most recent state legislative race, which I've found allows my system to capture some of the unique political pockets within states to a better degree than just simple Presidential numbers.  Furthermore, in using gubernatorial results to balance for state with strong state parties but weak national parties, when all is finished, the index should allow for cross-state comparison, but that is a few months away for now.  Instead, what I'll be up to, is continuing to churn out individual state indexes.  With redistricting underway, that means for some states, configuring their makeup for the current session, as well as what they're going to look like for the next decade.  It's a lot of number crunching, but I think it's going to be really valuable anytime you find yourself up late watching election turns for random state special elections.

So, now that I baited you with the numbers, lets go back to Wisconsin.

I've taken the same graph from before, and highlighted the Republican Senators who are facing recall attempts this summer.  I think from this data, there are a few things really worth looking at.

1) Dan Kapanke is going to lose.  Simply put, with the kind of swing that is being seen in Wisconsin, I just have a hard time imagining that this seat doesn't flip. For the state of Wisconsin, my model finds that Democrats have a 4 point advantage over Republicans (i.e., in a typical statewide election with generic candidates, the Democrat would win 52-48).  Of the 33 seats in the Wisconsin Senate, Mr. Kapanke's is the one that mirrors the politics of the state as a whole the most.

2) After Mr. Kapanke, it is REALLY unclear what will happen.  The huge bulk of Republican seats that could flip to Democrats aren't available for recall this year, as most of them were seats that the 2010 Republican wave carried.  We have no real measurement of the kind of ground shift that is happening in Wisconsin, as I'd hardly consider a state supreme court race related to this.  The closest thing we have is polling on re-doing the 2010 Governor's race.  At the end of February, PPP released a poll that found a 7% swing from Governor Scott Walker to his fall opponent Tom Barrett if the election was held again.

If 7% is the size of the anti-Walker swing, I'm not sure the special election is going to look good for Democrats. In 2010, the most conservative seat Democrats won had a WI-DI score of D+2.  A seven-point swing from there would only allow for Mr. Kapanke's seat to fall.  If you add those seven points onto the most conservative seat Democrats won in 2008, then you get into territory where Democrats would start winning seats, but that would be a huge political shift - outperforming President Obama's numbers in a special election seems like a really tall hill to climb.  There are special cases, like Sen. Randy Hopper, who appears to live full time in Madison, where addition factors might lead to a legislators demise, but without those personal factors, it's going to take a real uphill battle.

That being said, PPP found a much larger shift in election results when you looked at union households - I have no data on union membership in the Senate seats, but if there are union heavy pockets among the areas Democrats are targeting, Republicans might be in a little more trouble.

All this together, the recall process definitely seems like the right one, and I'd venture to guess that when Gov. Walker is the one on the ballot, flipping the Governor's office would certainly be within reach.  But pulling together the votes to overturn these state senate seats is an uphill battle - if successful, I don't think Democrats are going to have to worry too much about Wisconsin for a long while.