The Democrats' Problem-Part I

With recent Republican over-reach, the state of Wisconsin has become unrecognizable. A wholesale rewrite of our laws has paved the way toward a kleptocracy. Unlimited, untraceable dark money has been codified into our state campaign laws. Political ethics watchdog organizations and investigations have been enfeebled or eliminated. Walker's WEDC has been turned into a taxpayer-funded ATM for political contributors. Our state civil service system is being scrapped in favor of the hiring of political cronies, children of contributors, and party hacks.

If we want to turn around Wisconsin, it is clear that we must throw-out the corrupt politicians in power. Despite grossly partisan and crooked gerrymandering for legislative districts, we certainly have the votes to remove GOP politicians on the statewide level. After all, Wisconsin has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since the Reagan landslide of 1984. So what is the problem? Why does a state that reliably votes blue for President often fail to elect Democrats during non-presidential years?

Like in the rest of America, Wisconsin voter turn-out is much lower for off-year elections. As we pointed out last week, the ten-year average Wisconsin turn-out for Presidential elections is 66.5%, while that for gubernatorial elections is only 46.0%. If the voter drop-off between Presidential years and off-years hit both major parties equally, we would have Democrats in all statewide offices. Unfortunately, that is not the case. We decided to dig a little deeper into the data.

Let's compare the last four elections. In President Obama's first presidential election (2008), 2,939,604  Wisconsinites voted either Democratic or Republican. The 2010 election between Tom Barrett and Scott Walker saw a 27.4% drop-off from this number. However, there was a major difference in how the drop-off voters were distributed. Between the 2008 and 2010 elections, the Republican vote dropped by 10.6%. In contrast, the Democratic vote dropped an incredible 40.1%, effectively ceding the election to Walker.

A comparison between the 2012 and 2014 elections tells a similar story. In President Obama's reelection victory, 3,023,951 Wisconsinites voted for either Obama or Romney. The 2014 election between Mary Burke and Scott Walker saw a 22.0% drop in that turnout. The drop-off for Republicans between 2012 and 2014 was almost identical to that between 2008 and 2010 (10. 5%). In contrast, the Democratic drop-off was an unacceptably high 30.7%, again handing the election to Walker.

Is the off-year Democratic drop-off uniform across the state, or do some areas experience it more than others? We looked at patterns in the state's two largest cities, in the WOW counties, and in two random rural counties (Ashland and Dodge). Together, these counties account for about 43% of the statewide Democratic vote.

The drop-off in these five areas for the 2014 and 2010 gubernatorial races compared to the prior presidential races (30.7% and 40.1% statewide) are: Milwaukee (30.4%, 34.4%), Dane (18.6%, 27.3%), WOW counties (30.9%, 39.1%), Ashland (23.1%, 37.0%), and Dodge (32.1%, 47.1%).

The common wisdom is that the Democratic drop-off is due to lower engagement by students and minority voters during off-year elections. Nothing could be further from the truth. According to US Census data, the Milwaukee County population is only 53% White, not Hispanic or Latino. Yet this heavily minority County has a drop-off similar to the overall state. Dane County, with both large minority and student populations, has a drop-off substantially lower than the state average.

No, the Democratic drop-off in off-year elections is spread over the entire state-from the North Woods to small rural towns, to the Ring-of-Fire WOW Counties, to our largest cities. No area is immune.

Continued Democratic voting drop-offs of 30 to 40 percent is a prescription for off-year election disaster. There is an old saying, "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Progressives need to field charismatic candidates that voters can fall in love with. Candidates that give people a reason to go to the polls. And we could take a cue from our GOP friends and instill a little more discipline in our voters to turn-out for every election, not just the presidential ones.

If we want to return to clean government, to progressive policies, and to a robust state economy, we must face up to this problem. We need to implement robust GOTV policies in every corner of the state to fix Democratic off-year drop-off. To do otherwise is to settle for Walker and Walker clones running Wisconsin for the foreseeable future.

(first published by Paul Adair in Germantown NOW  Just Sayin' blog November 19, 2015)