April 1, 2025
NOTE: We asked elections data guru Joe Handrick to provide us what political scientists refer to as “some quick back-of-the-napkin” analysis of how the Wisconsin election returns should be analyzed this evening.
He makes a few points before even beginning his number crunching. First, we don’t know the actual percentage of the early vote any candidate has received. But Joe does make some assumptions based on historical trends. He’s the best election data number cruncher in Wisconsin, so we put a lot of faith behind his projections.
By Joe Handrick, for the Dairyland Sentinel
What’s the turnout increase compared to the last Supreme Court race two years ago?
First, some information regarding turnout.
Increases in turnout are never uniform. Minocqua has already passed 2023 with 1,949 as of 3:30. On pace for 2,350 – an increase of 23%.
The Dodge County Town of Clyman has 278 at 3:30. That would be a pace for 350 when the polls close, or an increase of 16% over the Supreme Court contest two years ago.
Dist 1 in Oconomowoc had a turnout of 1,178 at 2:30. Which puts it on pace for 2,100 – increase of 7%.
Statewide turnout in 2023 was 1.84 million.
What would these 3 projected increases in turnout if the entire state followed each one?
A 23% increase would yield 2.26 million votes.
A 7% increase would yield 1.97 million votes.
A 16% increase would yield 2.13 million votes
Clearly, Schimel is hoping the state increase looks more like Minocqua’s and less like that of Oconomowoc.
How big of a lead does Brad Schimel need before Milwaukee’s votes are included in the statewide results?
Now, what about the misnamed ‘ballot dumps’ which are really central count early/absentee vote tabulations, which come in late.
Some Wisconsin’s cities utilize a central count for absentee ballots. This means that election-day vote for each ward will be reported, and then later (sometimes hours later) the early votes at the central count is completed and gets reported en masse.
When this happens, you can expect a Schimel lead (if there is one) to shrink each time a central count is completed for a city.
Milwaukee is the biggest City in the state, so obviously their count will be the biggest. They also are notoriously the last to come in.
So how many votes is Susan Crawford likely to gain tonight when the Milwaukee early/absentee votes are added to the statewide total?
The number I came up with is 30,700. Schimel will want his lead to be at least that large going into the later hours of the night.
I did some quick math for some other central count cities and here are the NET amounts they could, once reported, detract from a Schimel lead.
Including Milwaukee the sum is 45,000.
Caution: If they are reported timely, they could already be in the ward total reported by the city. Also, there are some GOP cities that use central count too.
