A Dairyland Sentinel Analysis by Joe Handrick
The Least Surprising Thing You’ll Read All Day: Milwaukee and Madison Will Dominate Voting in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
It has been well-documented that the Democratic vote in Wisconsin is highly concentrated in Dane and Milwaukee Counties. Not surprisingly, that concentration is even greater in the Democratic primary.
The chart below shows the Dane/Milwaukee combined share of the statewide Democratic primary vote in recent cycles (Note: There were no statewide Primary races in the fall of 2020). As you can see, the two big blue counties contain 25% of the state’s population but account for around 40% of the Democratic primary vote.
Of the early vote that had been received as of the Friday before the primary, the Dane/Milwaukee combined share is 2% higher this year than it was in 2024. Too much cannot be read into this, however, as Wisconsin does not have party registration, so some of those early ballots will have been cast in the GOP primary.
Over recent cycles, Dane County has started to pass Milwaukee County in terms of raw Democratic primary votes. That trend is visible in the following chart.
Below are the statewide Democratic primary turnout numbers from 2018, 2022 and 2024. As one would expect, the 2022 turnout (with Evers as the unchallenged incumbent) was lower than the 2018 primary where a multitude of Democrats were running for the right to challenge Scott Walker. Also hurting Dem turnout four year ago: the 2022 US Senate Democratic primary fizzled to an end after an orchestrated suspension of several campaigns and the ascension of Mandela Barnes as the nominee.
The total rose, however, in 2024 even though there was no statewide primary for US Senate (Tammy Baldwin, incumbent). There were two statewide referenda on the ballot that day, but the spur in turnout seems to be more related to the across-the-board surge in voting as we approached the November 2024 election.
Differences Between Milwaukee and Madison
It is quite obvious to most that David Crowley will perform better in Milwaukee than in Madison. Afterall, he is from Milwaukee and Francesca Hong is from Madison. Furthermore, Madison is one of the national epicenters for Hong-style progressive politics.
Every state is different, but in the Michigan primary we saw different outcomes based on counties and the demographics of those counties. The comparison is quite limited because Hong is not Abdul El-Sayed and Crowley is not Haley Stevens. But in Michigan the more radical El-Sayed did better in college areas and white liberal areas while the more (relatively) moderate Stevens did better in blue-collar Democrat counties.
This is further reason to believe Hong will run up super margins in Madison and Crowley will perform better in Milwaukee County.
