Gov. Scott Walker beat expectations with a wide and early win over Democrat Mary Burke in Tuesday’s election, and experts say lower-than-anticipated voter turnout was the key to his victory.
Statewide voter turnout ended up at 54 percent, falling short of the nearly 58 percent turnout Wisconsin saw in Walker’s 2012 recall election against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, according to a report from the state Government Accountability Board. The agency had predicted 56.5 percent turnout in October, roughly 100,000 voters higher than went to the polls on Election Day.
“While 54.25 percent is a smaller turnout than the 57.8 percent in the recall election of 2012, it was still a record turnout for a regular gubernatorial election,” GAB Director Kevin Kennedy said.
The GAB reported nearly 50 percent turnout after the 2010 midterm elections.
David Canon, chair of UW-Madison’s political science department, said the most recent statewide polls predicted this would boost Walker’s margin of victory.
“The last [Marquette University Law School] poll actually came close to nailing it,” Canon said. “The first interpretation [of the election results] is that the electorate actually did change in the last week of the election … The thing that changed was Republicans said they were more likely to vote.”
The final Marquette poll estimated Walker was favored by 50 percent of likely voters to Burke’s 43 percent, the largest margin since polling began for the 2014 election. The poll also found 93 percent of Republicans were “certain to vote,” while only 82 percent of Democrats reported the same.
For whatever reason, Canon said, the same inspiration to vote that struck Republicans did not come to Democrats. He noted voter turnout among young people and Milwaukee residents, two groups Democrats usually depend on, was down from the Recall Election.
Milwaukee County election officials reported roughly 30,000 fewer people voted in Tuesday’s election than in the 2012 Recall Election. Burke carried Milwaukee County with 63 percent of the vote, according to numbers reported by the county clerk’s office.
Bolstered by his victory Tuesday, Walker is almost certainly considering a presidential run, Canon said.
“It depends on what Paul Ryan does,” Canon said. “[Ryan] has dibs … Walker has indicated that if Ryan runs, he will not.”
