This is just a short follow-up to my diary from Monday.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I'm still pretty tired from volunteering yesterday but I wanted to see where we did well in Senate district 8 and where Darling did well to help her retain her seat. First, the short version of my previous diary is that if we used the 2008 numbers as the baseline, what would happen if turnout percentage was higher in the Milwaukee county wards compared to the Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha county wards compared to 2008. I listed a scenario that if the turnout percentage was higher by just a little bit compared to the other counties and if the percentage vote in each of those counties was the same as 2008, we could win.
Well, here's what happened last night. First, the good news. Turnout in the district as a whole was about 74% of the 2008 total. Compare that to the primary a month ago where it was 33% of the 2008 total and also to the state supreme court race which was about 59% of the 2008 total. That is a huge increase in turnout. Think about it, 3/4 of the people that came out in a presidential election came out to vote in the middle of the summer in an off year special election.
Now the bad news and the main reason we lost this election. The turnout by county which I mentioned in my previous diary was basically the reverse of what I hoped for. Milwaukee County turnout was slightly less than the average turnout and the Pasch/Darling percentage was slightly lower in Milwaukee county compared to the 2008 numbers. Additionally, the other counties had better Darling/Pasch percentages than 2008 and also generally better turnout as well.
Here is the turnout by county for the 8th district in 2008 vs. 2011:
County |
2008 |
2011 |
% of 2008 Turnout |
Milwaukee |
49,097 |
35,872 |
73% |
Ozaukee |
16,241 |
12,637 |
78% |
Washington |
15,042 |
10,842 |
72% |
Waukesha |
18,938 |
14,216 |
75% |
So, the Milwaukee county turnout was slightly less than the 74% of 2008 turnout for the district as a whole yesterday while Waukesha and especially Ozaukee counties had higher turnout of 75 and 78 percent respectively. While Washington county had less percentage turnout than Milwaukee county, the Darling/Pasch split was much larger as you can see in the table below (73/27 compared to 68/32 in 2008). As you can also see in the party breakdown, Pasch did slightly worse than 2008 in Milwaukee county and Darling did better in all the other counties especially Washington county.
Here is the percentage breakdown for each candidate by county 2008 vs. 2011:
County |
2008 Dem/Rep |
2011 Dem/Rep |
Milwaukee |
64/36 |
62/38 |
Ozaukee |
38/62 |
33/67 |
Washington |
32/68 |
27/73 |
Waukesha |
36/64 |
34/66 |
It's unfortunate that with all the work we did and we did a lot, Darling did a better job getting her voters out yesterday. There's really no way to sugarcoat it.