Democratic Voter Motivation in Wisconsin: A Warning to the GOP

Somewhat lost among the daily coronavirus coverage is the story of the stunning defeat Republicans suffered in their effort to suppress voter turnout during the pandemic by limiting the number of polling locations and forcing voters to wait sometimes hours in line to cast their ballots. Democrats came out in force and defeating a right wing justice on the state supreme court in a landslide win for the liberal Democrat running for the seat.  If continued, this motivation on the part of Democrats and the shift it appears to show among suburban voters could make it difficult for Trump to carry that state in November.   Some Republicans cast cold water on that notion and claim that having Der Trumpenführer on the ballot will turn out more Republicans, while others admit that nothing turns out Democrat voters more than their loathing of Trump.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what happened in Wisconsin.  Here are highlights:

John Carter, 71, stood in line for three hours last week to cast his ballot for Jill Karofsky, the liberal candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Carter, a retired bus driver from Milwaukee and African American Democrat, said he wanted badly to oust conservative Justice Dan Kelly. And he wanted to send a message to President Trump and state Republicans, who pushed for in-person voting despite the threat of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, Karofsky claimed a surprisingly decisive victory, defeating the Republican incumbent by 11 points. She was propelled by thousands of motivated Democrats, who were angered by GOP insistence on going forward with the election amid the pandemic— seen by many as a way to suppress turnout and boost the conservative candidate in an obscure state court race.

The mobilization of these voters could signal a warning to Republicans in a state that will be key for Trump in the fall.

“There’s no question in my mind that Democrats are more motivated to vote than Republicans,” said Mark Mellman, a D.C.-based pollster who has done work for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D).

number of Republicans said too many factors were at work last Tuesday to draw conclusions about November, . . . . But some Republicans said the results show a worrisome enthusiasm gap.

“I was surprised at the turnout in the Democratic primary. It was more than what I thought it would be,” said Brandon Scholz, the former chairman of the Wisconsin GOP. The results reminded him how much Democrats hate the president, he said, and what a motivating force that could be.

Democrats are also delighted — and Republicans worried — about the geographic sweep of Karofsky’s victory. She dominated not only in the states’ two liberal strongholds, Milwaukee and Madison, but also in its suburbs and even some of its rural areas.

Charles Franklin, who conducts the Marquette University Law School poll, said the results underscored how changing voting patterns have increasingly cut into Republican margins in suburban counties around Milwaukee.

Karofsky won small majorities in three counties in the Fox Valley that have long favored Republicans. Franklin attributed the changes there to ever-stronger support for Democrats in the cities of Green Bay, Appleton and Oshkosh, which are surrounded by strong Republican rural areas. Franklin, the pollster with Marquette University, offered an additional caveat that makes direct comparisons with November’s presidential election more difficult: Trump himself was not on the ballot, and his ability to draw his voters out is considered one of his strongest assets.

But the patterns that helped decide the Supreme Court race worry Republicans nonetheless. The shifts were evident in the presidential races of 2012 and 2016 as well as in the gubernatorial elections of 2014 and 2018. In all cases, the Republican suburban strongholds were beginning to erode.

Said Gilkes, the GOP strategist: “I don’t think this is going to be an easy win in any way shape or form.”

Turning Revulsion of Trump Into Votes

On election day 2016, more registered voters stayed home than voted for Donald Trump.  Others who voted, threw their votes away on third party candidates motivated by some misguided sense of ideological purity.  By not voting or throwing away one's vote on a third party candidate with no chance in Hell of winning is in effect the same as voting for the least appealing candidate of the two major parties.  Had these non-voters voted or third party voting not occurred, America would not now be undergoing the daily nightmare of Donald Trump in the White House.  Hopefully, this reality is sinking in and now the task is to translate revulsion for Trump into votes at the polls come November, 2018.  In Virginia in 2017, Ralph Northam's campaign managed to do this via an incredible ground game that coordinated with all of the House of Delegates campaigns.  It's a pattern that can be replicated in 2018 provided voters belated grasp that their vote does matter and may be a bulwark against the worse excesses of Trump and the hideous GOP agenda.  A column in the New York Times looks at the need to turn hatred of Trump into votes in November.  Here are highlights:

During the 20 years that he has led the social democratic Working Families Party, Dan Cantor has waited for the left to get serious about building power through local politics. “People, sophisticated people, barely know who their state senator is,” he told me. A significant portion of nonmilitary spending in America is done at the state and local levels, he pointed out, “so it’s not like these are trivial offices. This is where people live.”

The religious right has long understood this. It became a major part of the Republican Party by systematically capturing seats on school boards and city councils. But many on the left either disdained electoral politics altogether — preferring demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street that quickly turned into ends in themselves — or gravitated toward nihilistic spoiler campaigns like those of Ralph Nader and Jill Stein.

Donald Trump’s election has changed that, spurring progressives to search for ways to exert power in the face of terrifying powerlessness. They have flooded into down-ballot races, bringing them unprecedented attention.

According to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, one in five Americans have either protested or attended a political rally since the start of 2016. These activists, many newly minted, are overwhelmingly anti-Trump. Mitchell aims to make sure they turn their revulsion into votes. . . . . much of the anti-Trump resistance is made up of middle-aged suburban women, and most identify as Democrats.
 Building a party that can simultaneously encompass feminist actresses in Manhattan, black liberationists and white Appalachian strikers is no small thing. All over the world, right-wing populism is ascendant, and so far we have little evidence that multiracial left-wing populism can successfully challenge it. But one thing that Trump’s election taught us is that just because something has never happened doesn’t mean it can’t. “Can we merge these ideals with serious electoral heft?” Mitchell asked. People dreaming of a country that’s egalitarian, cosmopolitan and humane have no choice but to try.