When the results of Tuesday’s election came in, it was clear Satya Rhodes-Conway had pulled off a statement election over incumbent Mayor Paul Soglin.
Rhodes-Conway, a former six-year alder, beat Soglin by 24 percentage points, despite coming in second to him in the primary election a month and a half prior. She pulled in just under 48,000 votes to Soglin’s 29,000.
Though Soglin won many wards off the isthmus during the primary, Rhodes-Conway improved on her primary performance in those areas, in many cases winning the same wards Soglin had in the primary. In the 121 city wards with at least one vote, Rhodes-Conway won 101.
She also doubled Soglin’s vote count in 12 of the 14 wards in areas of Madison largely populated by UW-Madison students. In multiple wards, Rhodes-Conway received nearly 1,000 votes more than Soglin, winning four east isthmus wards by more than 900.
Wards won by Soglin were located mostly on the city’s far east and west sides, with many on the edges of the city limits.
Helping Rhodes-Conway to her blowout win was a large voter turnout, much higher than the last mayoral election in 2015 but slightly smaller than in 2011. The 2015 mayoral election, in which Soglin enjoyed his own landslide victory over former Ald. Scott Resnick, only brought in around 52,000 votes. The 2011 election, when Soglin returned to office by a margin of about 700 votes, had a total vote count of around 88,000.
The Madison Clerk’s Office announced via Twitter the 79,453 votes cast Tuesday constituted 44 percent of registered voters. Just over 14,000 of those were cast in the early voting period.
