Wisconsin election: Expert analysis on early returns

I have a question for this side of the table. It has to do with spending, right? There was so much money spent in the Tiffany Crowley race, but does that translate into votes? Because it seems like Tiffany had quite the advantage heading in. Crowley did well these last few weeks when it came to money, but does that translate? I think what one wants to compare is, is somebody a player? In other words, are they in the game? Do they have enough money to make an impression in terms of advertising? And so, in other words, somebody spends $9 million, somebody spends $5 million. I don't think it makes much of a difference. But somebody spends $9 million and somebody spends half a million dollars, that's a big difference. They're not a player. And therefore, the $9 million is more likely to win. And when you ran for legislature many, many years ago, what was your budget? $15,000. Not too shabby. But a lot of money. I think they were saying this was a record breaker in the state of Wisconsin. Does that surprise you at all, or is that about what you'd expect in the governor's race? Money is the mother's milk of politics. That's how one succeeds. Not that the high spender always wins, but that you have to have enough to play the game. And I just started crunching some numbers as we were talking with Jason. What do we got? Based on the very early returns. We might have a low turnout tonight. I'm projecting right now about 2.4 million votes, which would be about 200,000 less than we had four years ago. And that would suggest that the day of election turnout is significantly lower because absentee ballots returned were actually about 50,000 higher. Right. And so we've got sort of two different pots and it's hard to tell when the results that we're seeing are coming in, if they include the absentee ballots of that municipality. If we're talking about low-population places like you were talking about a few minutes ago, it will always include the absentee ballots. It's the Milwaukee thing. It's that big, heavy lift where we really do need to know. Yeah, and the absentee ballots, just to remind everybody listening at home, those absentee ballots that are counted at a central count location, which is a large city like Milwaukee chooses to use a central count location, the absentee ballots are all part of one voting unit. And so those... Those absentee ballots are not going to be reported until all of the absentee ballots are counted at that central count location. So even though they may have processed a good chunk of those ballots, they can't report any of the numbers for the absentee ballots in the city of Milwaukee until all of the absentee ballots are counted at central count. Right. And what's so confusing is that we have to keep in mind people who voted today. People who voted early and people who registered today. There's about 8% of the voters in a midterm election who register on the day of the election. So these are, in a sense, new numbers. They're screwing us up because we have to know how many people totally are voting. And in Wisconsin, because you can register on the day of the election, that 8% may be all the difference in the world. So you said lower turnout. It may be what we're expecting here. Does that point to apathy? Does that point to people saying, I don't like the Republicans, I don't like the Democrats either? I mean, what I think it is, is that Wisconsinites are being Wisconsinites. They refuse to let the national news media tell them that they should care about the election or tell them that even if they usually don't vote, they should vote today. They're just sort of acting naturally, I guess, would be the way. I'm looking at the numbers from the last four weeks. Well, the last four general elections, two of those are presidential elections, where in 2020, for obvious reasons beyond just who was on the ballot, we had the COVID-19 pandemic, there were nearly 2 million ballots sent in absentee. So that's sort of, you take that one out, right? In 2024, the last presidential election, about 1.56 million ballots. But in midterm elections without a presidential race, 2022, 741,700. This year, 796,600. That is about a 7% increase in those early ballots being sent in. But what you're seeing, you say, looks like still overall could be a decrease in what we would expect in a midterm. Right. When you think about the average voter, they might be making a decision based on convenience. In other words, do I really want to hold off until Election Day? What if it rains on Election Day? And it did. And it did, and it did. And so some people are saying, I've discovered how nice it is to vote by mail, or I've discovered how nice it is to vote early. And I think those are the numbers, Brian, that you're really putting your finger on, that over the next couple of elections, we're going to be seeing more and more early voting and less and less voting on Election Day. So can we put the governor's race up on the screen again? Because I bet there are some people tuning in who would like to see what those numbers are. They've changed a little bit. How much is 8%? It's flip-flopping back and forth because the numbers are still so small right now. We have 8% of the vote counted. So we're getting into six figures finally for each of the candidates. But even at that, if we're talking 2.4 million votes, 2.5 million votes, whatever it might be, this is still a pretty small chunk. So those numbers going back and forth really doesn't have... Tremendous amount of meaning. The professor who taught me statistics for my PhD is going to cringe when I say this. But I think once we get to 25% of the vote in... We can start believing that these are serious numbers. And so I'd really like your comment just now that this is really sort of nothing. This doesn't count. When we start hitting at 25%, I think we can start saying, oh, it looks like somebody's doing a little better than we expected or somebody's doing worse than expected. And what would your statistics professor say to that? Oh, he would cringe. He would give me an F. We should wait until what? 70, 80? Yeah. Now, that being said, sometimes you can see an early number, something that is so widespread or so surprising to you, that's a pattern that is unlikely to change. We haven't looked at any of the other races, but certainly the governor's race seems to be falling about where you expected, which is it's teetering right along that center line. And right in the old days when townships would come in very slowly because they didn't have machines, they'd come in by hand. We used to say early returns are always Milwaukee and Dane County coming. You don't say that anymore. Because everybody's got the same tabulators, everybody's got the same IT information, and they can submit it so quickly. It'd be great to start zooming in on maybe one or two of the counties to see if we're getting any results there. So if we can pull up the graphics showing us Milwaukee County and just see what has been turned in so far for Milwaukee County. While we're trying to do that, I will point out we haven't seen the attorney general's race yet, but I look right now at our website as I'm looking. 50-50 between Josh Kaul and Eric Toney. So they're about 700 votes, no, maybe 1,300 votes apart right now with Josh Kaul in the lead, but it comes out to a 50-50 race. There you go. So, yeah, if we could go through the major constitutional offices for Wisconsin, we've seen the governor's race, we've seen... This is the Attorney General race. Let's go ahead and look at the Secretary of State race, which is interesting because you have three candidates on the ballot for that particular race. You have the Democrat, the Republican, and then you have a Green Party candidate running. So I'm wondering if that person's potentially going to take some votes away from the Democrat who's running for Secretary of State. In fact, the Republican was trying to do that. Yeah. The Republican was putting out text trying to encourage people to vote for the Green Party. Yes. And if you look at those Secretary of State numbers, Jason, Jason, what you're describing is exactly what we We see, I don't have the graphic up there, but Jay Schrader, the Republican, with 50% of the vote, about 100,000 votes. Jocasta Zamarripa, 46%. Guess how many the Green Party candidate has? 5%. 4%. Yeah, it's that missing piece. So here it is on your screen right there. So you can see this is the Secretary of State race, three-way race here in Wisconsin. And look at that. I will say the Secretary of State doesn't have as big a role in Wisconsin as it has in other states where it might have more involvement in elections and so on. The Secretary of State here has more to do with international adoptions and other sorts of documentation needs that arise. But it is interesting what's happening with that green candidate. You have these two constitutional offices in Wisconsin that have had their roles changed and really decreased over the years, as Mordecai can tell us. The Treasurer and Secretary of State have very, very limited roles. in the state of Wisconsin and not a lot of power right now but it'd be interesting also to look at the treasurer's race because you have the current incumbent, John Leiber, was the only Republican to win a constitutional office in Wisconsin at the state level in 2022. John Leiber was the only Republican. You had all the Democrats win for Attorney General, Governor, Secretary of State and those races, but the State Treasurer went Republican, so it would be great to see the results now of the State Treasurer race to see what that's looking like between Republicans and Democrats. Now, most good government people will say that they believe in what's called a short ballot. Short ballot means let the voters focus on important offices. Governor, for example, Attorney General, and that we as the voters should abolish these two offices, Secretary of State and State Treasurer. They no longer have any power. They just sort of... They confuse the ballot, they distract the attention of the voters, but it was a couple of years ago when there was a constitutional amendment that was on the ballot to abolish one of those offices, I don't remember which one it was, and the voters voted it down. They wanted to keep the state treasurer. They still wanted to keep it even though the state treasurer does nothing. The state treasurer does a few things, if you have what's the unclaimed property, the state treasurer runs, so let's see the results for state treasurer, and then I want to look at the constitutional amendments. Even though we only have eight or nine percent of the state in, it'll be interesting to see what the constitutional amendments, there's three of them on your ballot, what the results are there. So we're going to pull those up now and show you those results to get you up to date on the constitutional amendments and the state treasurer's race. Let's take a look. By the way, for what it's worth, I'll predict that all three amendments passed. Okay. Do you think so? Let's erase this part of the tape later on. Too late. It's out there now. I think most people, when they walk in, they vote yes. Okay. So this is the state treasurer race. And you're seeing it's not a 50-50 race at all. But this is only 10% in. But again, John Lieber was the one who was the Republican who won in 2022 when Democrats won the governor's, attorney general, and secretary of state races. But one Republican race then in 2022 went To the Republicans, that was John Liber for those constitutional offices, and of course at the same year Senator Ron Johnson won the Senate seat here in Wisconsin So you can see Wisconsin loves flipping their votes. They swing left and they swing right in the same election I want to point out that the U.S. Senate, which is the one that I think a lot of Democrats are watching, to say, is there any chance we could still take that one? If I'm doing my math right, it starts out with Republicans having 53 senators and Democrats 45, but the two independents caucus with them So effectively 53-47 They need to pick up three seats to draw even four to take that House They have picked up one so far tonight, so there's one on the way And there's more, obviously, to come in but they would need to pick up at least three more competitive seats that Republicans are defending to take the U.S. Senate And I'll add, if you go on our Fox Local app, there are some results trickling in for, like, state Senate district races Not a lot. I think the state Senate district 13 has 12 percent reporting and has John Jagler ahead So he's the incumbent in that. Race, so you want to check out some of these races, Jason? Yeah, so the 21st is that one crucial battleground district that is really a 50-50 district for state senate That's the 21st That includes parts of Racine, Caledonia, Raymond, up to Franklin. A large area of our viewership is in the senate district and the state senate And we've seen it's been held by a Republican, Van Wagoner He's retiring, not seeking re-election. And so Republican held the district, but... Vice President Kamala Harris won that particular district by a little over one percentage point. So it's really a 50-50 district We're going to see what the results are, but right now there are zero results in from that particular crucial district State Senate District here in Wisconsin. I'd really like to see if we can. I know we have some graphics for the United States Senate, because I know Brian was talking about that. We have this. I'll also point out the U.S. House is another one where Democrats need. They don't need as many seats there. I think they need to pick up three. They have picked up one as well in the House of Representatives. But they are not either of the competitive races in Wisconsin that we're watching, which would be House District 1 or House District 3. A long way to go in those. So there's your balance of power breakdown. Now we're still waiting for a lot of these swing states. You mentioned North Carolina flipping. Republicans are holding Florida for the United States Senate. But we're still a long way to go to see who controls the House and who controls the United States Senate. And can you speak to why this is so important and why we're obsessing over the balance of power so much? Because it has to do with the president's agenda? Absolutely. The party that has a majority is the party that runs the place. They get to decide what bills are we going to vote on and what bills are we not going to vote on. What amendments are we going to permit and support and not. It's everything. The minority party may as well just call it in because they don't have any influence at all. And if the Congress, if even one chamber of the United States House flips to the Democrats, the key issue we're going to talk about is the I-word again. Potential impeachment of various cabinet secretaries. You're going to have investigations, the other I word, investigations. So Democrats are already planning for what's going to happen if they take the majority of Congress and taking at least the House. And they're planning investigations into the Trump administration, into the first family, into the president, into the war on Iran. They're going to have investigations for everything. And they have that power. They'll have the subpoena power if they win. Control of one or two chambers. They'll be able to subpoena whoever they want. Right. And now, if you're President Trump, you'd be very unhappy about this, right? But a politician who's sort of more conventional than President Trump would say, OK, I lost the House. My party lost the House. I'm still controlling the White House. My party is controlling the Senate. Time to compromise. Time to pass legislation that is sort of half a loaf. I wish the American political system in Washington would have that dynamic. But I'm afraid that, Jason, that you're right. It's just going to be headline, headline, headline. By the way, we do have some early results in on the House District 1 race between Brian Stile and Mitchell Berman. Stile currently, you said, well, how many percent did you say? And we could start to pay attention. Twenty five. There are 22 percent. So we're not quite there. Brian Stile right now with a four percent lead, 52 percent to 48 percent. It's about. 37, 3600 votes in House District 3, where Rebecca Cook and Derek Van Orden, Rebecca Cook trying to come back and beat Derek Van Orden, who defeated her earlier. There is about a 1000 vote difference. Roughly Rebecca Cook currently in the lead there with 12% of the precincts reporting.