This is a special presentation from Civic Media News.
From our Civic Media Studios in Madison and across the state of Wisconsin,
this is special coverage of Wisconsin Decides 2024.
Here are your hosts, Todd Alba and Pat Critello.
And good evening from Election Center here.
The Election Desk Wisconsin Decides 2024 in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.
Todd Alba along with the hosts of Updorf News Radio every morning from six until eight.
Across the Civic Media Radio Network, Pat is not late.
Wait, tomorrow two.
Tomorrow two.
Tomorrow two.
Tomorrow two.
Oh, yeah.
Sleep quick, my friends.
Sleep quick.
It ain't late with soda, but we have a Lake Michigan.
We have Lake Minota on one side.
Lake Minota here.
We are the Isthmus of Madison, Pat Critello.
Nationally, a quick update electoral college, Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris right now with 238 electoral votes to 200 for Kamala Harris.
The big three, the blue wall for either candidate, really, but Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, all yet to be determined.
All those three states are still out along with Arizona and Nevada amongst others right now.
So it is going to be a wild pack right now before we know.
With that reminder that there are 105,000 absentee ballots in Milwaukee that will be added yet to the unofficial results that you see right now.
Whether that's enough to overcome the advantage that Donald Trump was already built up across many parts of Wisconsin.
Rose, Wisconsin, and elsewhere is the big open question as Kamala Harris comes closer to needing to sweep the blue wall in order to prevent a second Donald Trump presidency.
We have a civic media news projection for you.
According to the Associated Press, civic media can now project that Tony weed the Republican for the eighth congressional district here in Wisconsin has been declared the winner by the Associated Press.
Tony weed, the Republican defeats Dr. Crystal Lierley, the Democrat, and again, Pat Critello, somebody that we know you in particular know particularly well, a heck of a race for Crystal Lierley.
Yes, but in putting it in the larger frame, Tony weed always ran as Trump endorsed Tony weed.
Because it was Trump's name was first on the campaign signs, Trump endorsed him before even officially announced that he was in the race and took that, you know, as an article of faith that there was still enough Trump support across Northeast Wisconsin that would take him to a victory in this instance it did.
So from the eighth congressional district to the third in Southwest Wisconsin, where WRCO news director Joanne Kool-Az is standing by in Southwest Wisconsin, Richland Center, Joanne, quickly an update for us from Richland Center.
You know, it's been a close race between Baldwin and Huff D and Van Orden and Cook, then good news though on school referendum aspects.
There's only one municipality left report, but if the school referendum looks like it will pass 655 yes to 304 no.
And as you know, that's pretty sure it's going to pass because that is a very small school district.
Sounds good. Joanne, anything else before we leave you?
Well, on officially I look like Tony Kurtz defeated Julia Henley for the 41st state assembly, which of course that was a redrawn assembly map.
So Tony Kurtz now covers all of Richland County where before he only covered a portion of Richland Center.
So and Julia Henley was from Blue River from Richland County.
So, but he won that according, you know, that's what they're saying with 64% of the votes.
All right. Sounds good, Joanne. I know you're going to continue to watch that for us again.
And our great station WRCO and WRCE in Southwest Wisconsin.
We appreciate you Joanne. Cool. That's what check back in with you just a little bit later.
It is now coming up on three minutes past the hour of 11 o'clock. Let's recombobulate again with our political editor here at civic media, the founder of the recombobulation area over the recombobulation area himself, Mr. Dan Schafer.
Todd, how are you doing? How are you hanging in there?
I got, you know, a little one to stay coffee. I got a ginger candy. I got packed right low at you. What more do I need?
Well, you need numbers.
And those are the things Dan's following and following in part to see where Donald Trump is compared to four years ago, where Kamala Harris is compared to Joe Biden four years ago.
And you were, you wanted to stress one of the fundamentals of the race that we haven't talked about for a while. Kamala Harris has been in this race for what, 108 days, something like that.
And before that, it was Joe Biden and it was not looking good for him at the time.
A lot of people thought that we're going to be big changes in 100 some days, but maybe not.
I think this is one thing that we cannot overlook when we're breaking down some of the results of this race.
Joe Biden is an unpopular incumbent. His approval rating in the state of Wisconsin was never cratered down to about 40% and never recovered.
Even, you know, some nationally it ticked up after he dropped out of the race, but that really wasn't the case in Wisconsin.
I think if people are wanting change in this election, and if this is a change election, you know, you take a look at it's a democratic incumbent and people are voting against that incumbent.
That could be a reason we're seeing a lot of the success across the board that we're seeing for Republicans tonight.
I think we can talk about, you know, all sorts of different things with attack ads and the money in the race and whatever, but you have an incumbent who has been tremendously unpopular.
That has not changed for the past two or three years.
You know, there was, I think Democrats did better than many people expected in the midterms.
You know, usually you see the kind of wipe out type numbers coming back against the unpopular incumbent.
But I think that is one of the things that, you know, when I was covering a Marquette poll last week, that was one of the things that Charles Franklin stressed as one of those fundamentals in the race.
If people are not happy with the incumbent are, you know, if he on the economy, that is going to lead to an advantage for the opposition party.
I think though we have the recombobulation area, but we may need the deja vu area because you once again have a case where a democratic administration had to rescue what a Republican president had left behind.
The democratic administration then gets tagged as tax and spend and the Republican say we will be more fiscally responsible.
Rinse repeat every economist that has studied Donald Trump's plans for the economy versus Kamala Harris has made clear this cycle is going to repeat itself again, but voters don't decide on what Nobel Prize winning economists say they judge it on how they feel today.
Right. You could talk about, you know, yes, the American recovery has been the best in the world. We could judge it on all of these different metrics, but I'm going to quote Gordon hints. I talked to a former minority leader in Wisconsin.
I talked to him for my piece on the Fox Valley and he was saying that like it's your typical democratic issue if it takes three sentences to, if it takes three sentences to explain it, you're going to lose.
I think that's kind of where they are on the economy. The Republicans have had the advantage on the economy throughout this race.
And you know, the polling that indicated that Harris was closing the gap and I think the messaging that she had in the home stretch was successful.
But I think that advantage and that Joe, the unpopularity of Joe Biden, is it is a factor that we cannot overlook when we're looking at the results tonight.
What just seems bizarre to me. And I'm not to speed away saying Dan, but I guess as someone who's kind of a political nut and it's followed this stuff and worked it up for a lot of years.
When I think back to four years ago, you know, I do people who are dying of COVID, the economy was shut down gas prices for $4 a gallon.
I mean, you could go on on to the things that we know. And you had a person that was just creating chaos day in and day out.
And then here comes along Joe Biden, who takes care of everything I just said largely.
And as a stand up guy has one bad debate and people want to go sour on them because their eggs cost 25 cents more than they did three years ago.
I mean, you know, those who say back to racial center just don't add up.
Yeah, but it was there was more than one bad debate.
Right. People had soured on him. I think beginning in kind of, you know, not too long into his presidency.
Like he didn't have a particularly long honeymoon period.
And his numbers really started to fall fairly early and they just have not been able to recover.
And I think this is, you know, you could see this to a certain extent of this race as a referendum on the incumbent.
I think that is one of those essential questions right of are you better off than you are four years ago.
I would agree with you, Todd. I would agree that we are better in a better place with a thriving economy and we are not a nation consumed by COVID.
We talk a lot though about Democrats don't to their own horn.
And after the state of the union when Joe Biden got a bounce because he had a strong state of the union performs and he finally embraced the term by dynamics.
And that lasted about a month and then he kept getting hammered on the economy.
But if he and Democrats had done a better job of tuning their own horn, we might be having a different discussion.
But they allowed Trump and hubby and others to set the message, the economic message and say, isn't this terrible? Aren't you miserable? Don't you hate this and Biden and the Democrats?
I don't think it responded nearly forcefully enough. That's what I think we're seeing in the numbers tonight.
And I think you also can overlook the fact that there are some certain people out there who are thinking pre pandemic, not thinking about what happened in 2020.
Thinking about pre pandemic and thinking, hey, things were things were pretty good at that point, whatever it might be and post pandemic.
Oh, everything's more expensive now. And so if you're just comparing those two things on their face, you know, obviously the context matters, all of the different narratives matter.
If you're looking at just those two things, when, when did I feel better about the economy, about my pocketbook, there are people who might be out there saying, yeah, things were just too expensive the last four years.
And we want to go back to, you know, this pre-COVID dynamic that Donald Trump was ever seen.
Dan Kelly, political editor will recombobulate with you in a bit.
Oh, Dan Schanfer, by the way, we were about to talk about James Kelly.
I'm looking at one thing again, you know, it's, it's that type of.
He's discombobulated. I discombobulated. Dan, I apologize.
James will recombobulate with you in a moment. James Kelly is reporting.
I reported there in the Chippewa Valley that the Rebecca Cook watch party has ended and she has left the building.
No new remarks beyond waiting to see the final vote totals. That's in the third congressional district in the eighth congressional district.
The press has called it incumbent Republican Brian style has defeated Peter Barker and will take another term in that southeast Wisconsin district.
So that enables us now to having updated some of the Wisconsin races to do another one of my courier newsroom colleagues from the copper courier in Arizona.
And Cam Stevenson is the one of the folks that helped found the copper courier way back in the day, meaning five, five years ago or so.
Cam joins us now. Cam Werner is on air. I forgot to ask.
I'm not hearing you here. Hang on a second. Let's see if either you're muted or if somebody can hit your hit a button to hear you better.
We'll give him a second to recombobulate. We can all get discombobulated here. It always can happen. Yeah, absolutely.
There you go. There you are. How are you, Cam?
Great. You know, doing a lot better now that we can actually communicate. Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us kind of the latest there where you two have not just a swing state presidential race, but you have a key US Senate race as well.
How are things looking in both of those instances at this hour?
Yeah, no, we got we got the presidential, of course, the Senate race with the Ruben Geigo and Carrie Lake, and then we have a few congressional house races as well.
I will say that we don't know enough to definitively say anything here. We still have about 33% of votes in Maricopa County still to count, which will take several days, possibly weeks.
And so we're not, we don't have enough to determine anything, but I can tell you what the tea leaves say so far.
And what they're telling us is that they want Ruben Geigo in the Senate. He's the Democratic candidate.
It's it's teedering back and forth with being Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for the presidency.
And in the house races that are pretty close are currently favoring Democrats on both, both ends.
How would you characterize the Senate race because Carrie Lake is an unusual figure, who still I believe has the delusion that she's also won the governor's race from a couple of years ago.
How was that race? How to go over there?
So well, Carrie Lake, yeah. I mean, she is actually still litigating her 2022 gubernatorial loss.
She has a case going through this Supreme Court that's trying to see her as governor, which would be tricky if she won Senate.
However, she's not going to worry about either.
Yeah, because the gubernator's order rice is done. We've had Katie Hobbs as our governor for two years.
And Carrie Lake, unfortunately for her carries all of the baggage of Donald Trump, but none of the clout.
She is she's offended a large segment of the Arizona Republican Party, you know, a big group that are very pro John McCain, like those those era that type of Republican.
She is also offended, of course, a lot of Democrats independence, anyone who supports abortion access, which was also on the ballot here in Arizona.
And she hasn't done much to win over new voters since 2022.
And we're seeing that now. I believe Geigo is up by about 100,000 votes, which still isn't enough to call the race, but it is a very comfortable lead.
And he gave a what I would call a low key victory speech about 20 minutes ago at the Democratic Party's watch night.
Now, I don't want to paint with a broad brush year when I talk about Latino voters, but we we were talking a little bit ago about the unreal 35 point swing for Ted Cruz, who lost the Latino vote badly six years ago.
And actually won the Latino vote by single digits, but still won the Latino vote this time around. Is there anything from exit polls or other reporting that you've done that would indicate any kind of a change in, you know, in the vote there for the presidential race, which we know is still far too early to call.
Yeah, no, definitely. We don't have demographic break down of our of our votes in any sort. I haven't seen any reliable exit polls on, you know, demographics other than Republican, temperate independent.
But I will say that recent polling from from some grassroots groups here in Arizona, they surveyed about a thousand Latino voters.
Democrats, independents, Republicans. And I believe it was about 70% of people who they surveyed said that they just don't trust the Republican party here in Arizona to properly reflect their values.
And one of the problems that was seen in that polling is that Republicans here, they hammer immigration and border policy.
But Latinos, majority of them are first generation, their second generation, third, fourth generation Americans. And immigration is one of the issues they're concerned about, but it isn't a priority.
And so Republicans here have kind of pigeonholed that issue and pushed that where Latinos here aren't hearing about the economy, they're not hearing their plans for affordable housing.
They're not hearing how they can actually how Republicans can actually help their families. And so they are from from this polling anyway, they have vast, the vast majority have have continued to stick with the Democratic candidates.
But again, we're not going to know the actual results for for a little bit longer.
All right. Cam Stevenson from the copper courier, a part of courier newsroom, find his reporting and his team at coppercurrier.com.
Cam, thanks so much. Great to talk to you.
Thanks, YouTube. Have a good night. Happy last night.
Thank you, you too.
And now we go to another one of our great reporters here at Civic Media, Lisa Hale, WGBW up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who has been at the Tony weed victory party tonight up there in Green Bay.
And Lisa, it was in fact a victory party as an associate of press has called it as Tony weed is now Congressman elect.
Absolutely. And he gave his victory speech before the AP called it when he had went about 40 is not 40 about 53% of the vote was counted and he had a 60% advantage there.
So he did call it and he did give his except his acceptance speech. And the cool thing about it is that he said he was now working towards healing the divide that seems to be happening in and around Wisconsin with the us versus them.
So it was good to hear that come from him.
Yeah, I think that's really interesting and regardless. And we still have a ways to go here tonight before we find out on the presidential ticket, which side is going to be declared the winner or not.
But Lisa, you bring up a good point and it is this once all of these votes are counted once the results are known, it is incumbent upon us as Wisconsinites to come together and recognize that our neighbors are not our enemies.
And I give Tony weed credit that sort of rhetoric tonight is exactly doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, my opinion, that's the kind of rhetoric we need from all our candidates tonight.
And that's what he was trying to say, you know, now is the time to come together to heal the divide and to work together to make things better for Northeast Wisconsin. And that was his message.
Yeah, Lisa, any other reporting from that part of the of the state tonight that you'd like to share with our statewide audience.
I wish I had more.
Well, that's pretty big.
Yeah, new congressman is that small potatoes here. I just, you know, I've been your shoes. You don't want to get off there and say, well, why did they ask me about this?
And so I just want to make sure that we gave you every opportunity, but you would do fantastic work is you always do for us up there.
So I appreciate that. I know in the six in the six.
CD, Glenn Grossman won reelection. So he will be returning to the to Congress for that in the six CD, which is also in this Northeast Wisconsin area right now.
I'm waiting for information on Senate district 18 and Senate district 30 to of those seats are very important for the Green Bay area.
All right, Lisa. Hey, I'll thank you so very much up there WGB W in beautiful Green Bay, Wisconsin. We always appreciate you.
I'm not sure. Trigby Olson senior advisor at the Lincoln project out in our nation's capital. Trigby, are you still standing by with us?
There he is. There he is. Look at that. Trigby is still working on. No, we appreciate it. Trigby, what do you mean?
I think what Lisa just said there, Trigby, and we you and I have Pat have talked about our show about this that after these votes are counted, regardless of who wins.
I'll give Tony weed credit for reaching out and being trying to bring people in and and and and reach out across the aisle and say he wants to represent everyone.
And because we have to get along after this election.
I think a lot of that's going to be on the guy, you know, assuming Trump, if Trump ends up prevailing, which that seems to be the more likely outcome.
A lot of that's going to be on Donald Trump and the question you have to ask yourself is does he have the capacity to do that? And he, I don't have an answer for it.
But it really is my call. I do think the Democrats, you're already seeing this. I'm not sure that they're taking the right lessons from what transpired here.
I mean, the exit polls in Arizona, I went and looked them up. Well, that other person was talking.
Appears to have won 54% and Donald Trump got 43.
That is an issue.
Younger males clearly is an issue.
And I would just say as, you know, somebody who's a former Republican who used to run campaigns on that side when I when I look at how Democrats approach elections versus how Republicans do.
Trump built a narrative. It wasn't necessarily about issues. It was a narrative.
And Democrats, well, yeah, it wasn't, but that's, that's a different story.
You know, at some point,
that that matters because that is, that is, you know, they're telling a story. Well, Democrats are talking about various policy prescriptions for each people that might make them better and more sort of what our democracy was.
It's also true. The electorate is realigning in Wisconsin than elsewhere.
I want to ask both of you this question because I know many of our regular listeners and we have a lot of viewers, a lot of stream watchers tonight.
You know, what you just said, Trigby is that we again, this is not over. We don't have final numbers, but if you look at the trends right now and Pennsylvania Michigan Wisconsin is trending towards Donald Trump, that is not going to be welcome news to many of the civic media listeners out there.
Are you suggesting Trigby that the way the Democrats win is to basically match the negativity of the of the magaside?
I'm not saying negativity. I'm saying that that when these narratives are built, they have to do a better job of responding.
I mean, the response to ads like those trans ads that clearly have had an impact in Wisconsin is to come back at that and say, this was Donald Trump's policy.
Now, it was more damaging because in Harris's case, she was actually saying it, but up and down the ballot, they were basically building a narrative, these people don't get it.
The issue is an 85 15 issue with most people and you can get into the details and the minutiae of it, but you've got to build ads and messaging that skewer towards people, not towards algorithms.
Matt Cretlo.
I'll hold off till we get a couple of other folks waiting and we'll comment more on where the Democratic Party goes from here.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's great. Trigby, stand by. We'll come back to you in just a little bit.
Right now, we have some report from Britney Merlot, who was at the event for Dr. Liarly tonight.
Again, Dr. Liarly loses to Tony weed. Britney, are you with us live? Do you have that reporter? Is this all right? Very good, Britney. Go ahead.
Yes, I am here right now. So a little bit in shock is the vibe right now from Dr. Liarly.
A little worried too, of course, for women's reproductive rights and all of those things. And she did make a comment that if Trump does win, she's extremely worried for all the women and stuff like that.
So just a little shock going on here. And you know, she's worked really, really hard. She's going to continue to push forward.
You know, it's again about women and you know, she is a doctor. So she's going to go back to work and continue to do that and help as many people as she possibly can.
You know, just a point. That's for sure. And in shock. And did my scene right here? Do you have a little bit of audio here from Dr. Liarly?
Well, we can maybe get that on the other side of the break here since we're coming up against that. But we really appreciate getting getting some insight on what Dr. Liarly supporters are going through this evening.
This is a special presentation from civic media news.
From our civic media studios in Madison and across the state of Wisconsin, this is special coverage of Wisconsin decides 2024.
Here are your hosts, Todd Alba and Pat Crite Low.
And welcome back to our continuing coverage here of election night about Pat Crite Low to go into election morning here in another half hour, 1130 here in Wisconsin.
As we continue on with our coverage, Pat Crite Low of up north news radio, which will be getting on the air just a few hours.
That's right. Well, I'm going to join you.
We'll just kind of it's like unpacking and then repacking right away. And I'll just take the Roy Kent mug here.
And it'll it'll have coffee in it again before I say Pat Crite Low had no idea what the election results would be, but he chose the perfect mug for tonight.
Oh, I knew it. Yeah. Oh, he was going to be the way to go. No matter what, it was going to be a long night.
There are other phrases of Roy Kent. We can't say in a broadcast network.
There are probably more profits for why we go with. That's all we've got the thing about having a an electorate that is so closely divided now.
Is it is it is almost rendered obsolete. In many cases, the victory party, right?
The presidential ones have gotten quiet. A lot of reporters have already gone because the, you know, the parties are done because they know it's going to be a very late night.
We've talked a lot about Milwaukee with 105,000 ballots coming in, but Dan Schaefer just told us, you know, that there's still.
While we're toast out there, and by, but we haven't even picked on Brown County yet. Brown County.
I don't know. Dan, what, what, how would we describe Brown County's reporting so far?
I frankly am a little discombobulated by what's happening.
It's convobulated. What about the rest of us?
And Brown County. Yeah, look, it's if you're looking at the district 90 race that includes kind of the core of Green Bay.
We're looking at the journal sentals reporting site. They have zero percent on the site. New York Times has one percent on the state center race.
And so I think, you know, these are some of the most critical races in the state.
The 89th and 88th Assembly District Senate District 30 in and around Brown County in Green Bay there.
We don't really have any of that information just yet.
I think, you know, just we're mentioning to some of the central count locations. It's not just the city of Milwaukee in Milwaukee County that has central count as well.
You have the city of Oak Creek, the village of Shorewood, city of South Milwaukee, city of Wauwatosa, city of West Dallas.
There's a lot of blue votes in some of those communities as well. So I think people might be out there talking about, you know, what kind of margin should we expect from Milwaukee?
And what have you, there are places around Milwaukee County, in addition to the city of Milwaukee that we should be watching as well.
This is a few minutes old now from Charles Benson at TMJ 4, but he talks about the crunch time here where he says Trump was holding on to a 95,000 vote lead.
Eric Havde is holding on to a 47,000 vote lead. That's with most of the Dane County vote in.
So now it is really about watching Milwaukee and Brown and seeing if that gap can be closed and that that really is what the rest of the night is all about, right?
I think so. And I think the, you know, the Milwaukee margins. And again, I will say not just city of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, many of those municipalities as well.
So that will be a critical one to watch. One of the places that we've already seen a lot of election results come in is from Western Wisconsin.
Many of the Western Wisconsin communities do not have central count.
So a couple of those assembly races that I've been monitoring here in the Eau Claire area. There's kind of three new districts there.
And they kind of run the spectrum. They're all pretty competitive, but one leans blue. One's kind of more in the middle. One leans a little bit more red.
The one that leans blue, a Democrat Christian Phelps is in good shape there in assembly district 93. That is the most blue leaning of those three. That would be a pickup for Democrats.
So I think we're looking at an environment in the assembly where, you know, we're not going to see these near super majority status for Republicans there.
So this is one of those that I think Democrats will add to their column.
Let me interject real quickly. Christian Phelps is a guy who is about your show a lot, Pat, with Wisconsin Public Education Network.
My sister taught him up at Eau Claire Public Schools, just a tremendous young person.
Again, a lot of energy, a lot of commitment. And I think Dan Schaefer is, well, either one of you, I mean, that's the kind of candidates we need moving forward.
Oh, yeah. I mean, we're not looking for, you know, party insiders, if you will.
Right. We're looking for people with that, that energy, that commitment. It's something that I continually see in up and coming, you know, Jen Z talent.
Why, you know, guys like me are very happy to start to shuffle off the stage now at this point.
I'm Christian Phelps did, but did that. And I'm very happy for what he was able to accomplish in the Chippewa Valley.
It looks like Jody Emerson is going to hold on to her seat, but the 90 second district former assembly rep Joe Plough is not going to get his seat back there.
That was, that was the most Republican leaning of the three and that was going to be a difficult race for him. And that was kind of where things were shaping up.
In the lacrosse area, there's a couple of interesting results. I want to point out too.
For one, the state, state Senate district, we mentioned this one earlier, Brad Paff.
He looks and look, he's in good shape to win reelection there at Senate District 32.
Most of lacrosse County is in and he's running up some good numbers there.
There might be some Republican leaning votes out there in Monroe County, but I don't think it'll be enough for Republican challenger Stacey Klein to overcome Paff's lead.
Another one in in the lacrosse area in the on the assembly side, Assembly District 96.
This could be another pickup opportunity for Democrats.
Tara Johnson, the Democrat there is in the lead. It's a pretty slim lead, but most of the Republican leaning county there, Vernon County, that has all has reported all of its results.
So if there's any more results out there, they would likely be lacrosse County and Johnson is leading in lacrosse County with more than 60% of the vote there.
So I think that looks like yet another pickup opportunity for Democrats in the new maps in lacrosse area.
Gentlemen, let's take a moment just because people might be listening to me and say, why aren't they talking about the US Senate race?
Well, with 82% of the vote in, I mean, you've talked about it extensively, Daniel, both of you about these numbers that are still out.
It's not just presidential numbers, it's ballots, right?
So we're still waiting, and this is why this race has not been called because with 82% of the vote in, Eric Cumpty is leading 50% 5-0 to incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin 47.8.
What is interesting to me, and again, Pat, I hesitate to do math on the air at 11.30 p.m. at night, but it appears that Senator Baldwin is down 55,000-ish votes.
And if you look at the third-party candidates between Phil Anderson and Thomas Leager, who I've never heard of before, you add that up.
That's 30, 40, 50, about pretty close to 60,000 votes.
I mean, are we going to see this guys where you had a lot of people, particularly on the Democratic side, who were upset with things like the Palestinian and the Gaza issues saying, I'm going to vote third party on a protest.
Could they have an effect on this race for you as Senate, as well as the President?
I don't know. I think that with numbers that small while it is within the margin of the top two candidates, I think you always have to bake in that there's going to be a part of the electorate, in this case, whatever that is, couple of percent.
We always go that way. We'd like to talk about this being binary choices, but there are just some people who will always cast a protest vote, or maybe they actually do believe the green party will be a real party someday or something like that.
I think, again, like Dan says, you've got to come back to the fundamentals, not blaming the third-party margin, but saying, why didn't I close this margin by more and get that gap closed?
And if this is shaping up to be a change election, well, I think that was part of the messaging in the Senate race too.
Tammy Baldwin's a multiple-term incumbent, and I think if people are looking at this as a change election, that is going to hurt her in this race as well.
So that one, again, very much coming down to the wire in the Senate race.
But I think the reason that maybe we haven't talked about some of the Senate race as much as the presidential race is because those numbers are tracking very similarly.
And I think there is not a lot of distance between where Eric Houghney is running and where Donald Trump is running in this race too.
And so as we talk about some of the results on that side of things, the same things can be said in many ways for the Senate race as well.
Let's bring in Trigby Olson, at least one more time here before we call it quits at the top of the hour.
Trigby is still there on nation's capital. Trigby also native of River Falls, Wisconsin.
And a former Republican like myself, now a senior advisor at the Lincoln Project.
Trigby, we've talked about on our show.
I spent a talk about on this network ticket splitters out there.
The Evers Johnson voters today in Shafer's point just a minute ago.
It doesn't seem like there's a lot of ticket splitters.
It seems like the Trump people are voting for Houghney.
The Harris people are voting for Baldwin in this and at least in those two races.
I mean, so a couple of thoughts.
One, it's hard to know until you look at the under vote.
How many, how much of that's going on?
Second thing is, what's the through line between the two campaigns?
I mean, the truth of the matter is in a state like Wisconsin, you have about 45, 46% who are going to vote one way.
You have 45, 46% who are going to vote the other way, depending on the national sort of environment.
And you've got that group in the middle.
What's the through line between the messaging around the Houghney race, Houghney Baldwin race, and the Harris Trump race?
Yeah.
What's the through line Todd or pad?
It's the ads they read against them.
And what is the ad?
It was the anti-transform against.
Right.
And completely false and unfaction.
And that ad was geared right at where Trump and probably Houghney to a degree are performing better.
I mean, that, that, that's the bottom line.
And so if you look at Baldwin was running better than Harris for quite some time, what narrowed that race out.
And, and here's the thing, you know, you mentioned that they were running similar ads in state legislative races.
The bottom line is when something's working, you start running it everywhere.
In 1994, I was running a state Senate race against Rod Mohn.
We were running against Bill Clinton.
Rod Mohn had nothing to do with Bill Clinton.
That's what you do.
I mean, and it's geared towards a small slot, a small slot, a small set of voters.
And, and the reality is, you know, you have other stuff that's going on for turnout.
You got to give the Trump campaign credit.
And the hub, these two, if they did in, if they, if they truly get 20% of African Americans in Milwaukee, come use for them.
They deserve credit.
They reshaped the electorate and they, they energized that rural turnout.
That ad, she's, you know, Tammy Baldwin's changed that work.
And it's not just in, in Wisconsin, we're getting word now that Kamala Harris in, in winning the state of New York is going to win it by the thinnest margin in a generation.
Basically, a 10 point shift to the right.
And next door in New Jersey, it went from, you know, a 16 point advantage with Biden to a six point advantage for Harris.
Again, about a 10 point shift to the right in, in these states that are reliably democratic.
And you see him in Minnesota.
Pat, Minnesota is a, again, a very big shift that it.
Harris is, I still think Harris is going to win this, but.
Oh, she'll win Minnesota, but again, by the margin.
Yes.
Yeah.
By the way, MSNBC now projecting NBC News now projecting the downtrum will win the peach state, the state of Georgia.
Again, one of those states that Joe Biden won last time and was flipped over apparently this time now to Donald Trump.
But I want to go back to you to something that Dan Schaeffer has been coming back to you.
You're perspective on this and someone who's won national races as well about a change election.
And what do you make of this of that kind of the other through line here that people looked at the Biden administration and said they wanted change to me.
And as somebody who follows this stuff kind of as a geek politically, it seems odd to think that Donald Trump is a, is a.
A venue of vessel of change, but I think Dan is right.
It's different than what we've had lately and the old phrase, you know, what have you done for me lately politically is the same as anything else.
I don't know there was change election.
I think it was a value selection. And you know, they mobilized and turned out more people.
I'm not sure that it was about change so much.
I mean, 10 evolved into pulling 49% of the vote.
I don't think it was so much about changes. It was really a us versus them, black or white.
And I think the Trump campaign understood going into this election that whoever the Democrat was.
And it particularly went flip to Harris and she had momentum that they that they had to get people who didn't like Donald Trump to vote for him.
And that's what it appears to be the case in Wisconsin.
6, 8% in the exit polls of the people who voted for Trump had an unfavorable impression of them.
But clearly they had a more unfavorable impression of Harris or they felt like her values and what she would expose didn't conform with what they did.
And I mean, a sad for guys like us to sit here and have that conversation.
Because you know, we come at it from a different set of perspectives in terms of values, but that really is what what it came down to.
I'm just looking at, of course, you know, again, it's not over, but the fact that things are as tight as they are, you know, some of the finger pointing is out there with people, according to one MSNBC columnist saying that if Harris loses, there will be a lot of recriminations directed at her.
But it's hard to point to any glaring mistakes that she made.
The flip side is that Trump ran an awful campaign. He gave a terrible convention speech. His vice president is deeply unpopular.
He lost the debate. He had no ground game. He offended key demographic groups.
And none of it mattered.
I only laugh, guys, because a long time friend of mine, who worked with me at the state Capitol for my former boss, they said are Dale Schultz.
We have these conversations for a long time.
And I say, hey, Trump did this. Hey, Trump did that. Hey, did you see this? You don't want to come back always is nothing matters. Nothing matters.
It's about winning. It's about power. Yeah, rather than about. I mean, I appreciate the words that Tony Weed gave, you know, in his victory speech about working across the aisle and all of that.
The proof is in the pudding. And if, you know, if you end up with what is now going to be a Senate under Republican control, the house, it's truly the same, but the house may go for it.
The house may be back under Democratic control. And Donald Trump in the White House.
Look, I think I think we're going to have a legislature that's going to have closer margins and might be able to do a better job of working together.
But I don't see signs that you're going to necessarily get that in Congress. I would only say to a Tony Weed and some of the others.
Let's, let's see that. Let's see not the extremist bills being introduced. I'll believe it when I see Dan Schaffer, I help us. We could buy me this one because people asking me what's going on with Speaker Robin Voss?
The election has not been called. What's going on there?
You know, I don't know why it hasn't been called. It does not look particularly close. I know there was a, you know, some independent candidates or red ins or whatever.
But yeah, he's, he's in a very deep red Republican district in Western Racine County. He looks like he's going to be reelected, whether he will remain the assembly speaker is an open question.
Let's talk about that for a second because there was reporting out there that he felt whether it was, I don't know, as Trump says, people were saying that Robin Voss thought he had to have at least a five or six feet majority to keep the, the gavel.
You know, any, any fact to that Dave Schaffer.
Yeah, one of the things that I have come across in some of my reporting there as well as that, you know, he sat on the record to college Democrats at UW-Madison that he needed to get to 55 assembly seats in order to remain assembly speaker.
There is kind of a short list of four or five Republicans who probably don't want Robin Voss to return as assembly speaker.
You know, there was the recall attempt against him, all these different things. So right now it does not, you know, it's, it's close in the assembly.
There are a lot of these races really coming down to the wire Democrats are going to make significant gains. I don't know if Republicans are going to get to that 55 seat threshold.
I think they needed to win some of the, you know, further outreach races, Jody Emerson's race in the, in the O'Claire area.
It seemed like one of them, the Shaboygan race, Steve Doyle's race. So I don't really know if, if he is in a position to reach that 55 seat threshold.
Wait, are you saying we may see what we saw in Congress with like multiple, multiple ballots to elect a speaker in the assembly this time instead of the US House?
It does seem like a potential outcome. And I don't know exactly how, how things would shake out. We obviously need to see some more of the results here to see exactly how, how the assembly shapes up.
We're getting, starting to get a clearer picture of that in the last, in the last few minutes here as well as some of these races get close.
Actually, one race that I want to talk about that is extremely close is the race in assembly district 26.
That is the one in the city of Shaboygan. Now, I've talked about this race. It was kind of an example of where this, how gerrymandering really impacted the state.
There was a line right down the middle of the city of Shaboygan, splitting it into kind of two pink districts.
And now all of Shaboygan is in one district and it is a toss up seat.
Well, taking a look at the results more than 99% of the results in Democrat Joe Shien is up.
Actually, he's up by a little bit more. It looks like he might, he might win this one. Last I checked before we started talking about this. He was up by only about 60 votes.
So that was an incredibly close race. That looks like a potential flip here for Joe Shien beat defeating incumbent Republican Amy Benzfeld.
All right, gentlemen, we're starting to go ahead.
I was going to say, yeah, I was going to make that transition as we, we start to to wind things down.
We do have some audio from Dr. Kristen Learly talking to Brittany Merlot when, you know, things were looking like the way that they ended up going with Tony weed winning that race.
And so let's play a little bit of Dr. Learly talking with Brittany Merlot a little earlier.
Disappointed, you know, we put everything we had into this campaign. I have an incredible team.
I'm really proud of what we've done, not just my team, but all volunteers.
All the people who came forward and shared their stories.
I'm sad, but my race is one of many. And no matter what, and we knew this was a long shot from the beginning.
And no matter what, I am not done. There's so much more work that needs to be done.
So I'm just going to keep doing more because I need to, my patients, women and Wisconsin need me to families and Wisconsin need me to.
That won't change. I'm worried about the presidential action.
If Donald Trump is our president, I'm very, very concerned about the future of reproductive health care in this country.
I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we're all okay.
As worth noting that again, you have majority support for abortion rights come to Florida where that referendum tonight failed.
But it needed 60% to pass. It got 57%. And so there will be this push if things go the way that they're currently looking to continue to chip away at women's health care rights.
And they fought back like never before this year.
And at the moment, it's possible that they're going to fall short. I'll, I'll close with what J.R. Ross from was politics is kind of closing with with 83% of the Wisconsin vote in Trump is up 113,000 votes.
Eric Houdies up, but only about 63,000 votes.
We do not have the central count numbers yet from Milwaukee, from Walla, Tosa, from Green Bay, from Racine.
Now, one one analyst is projecting that Dems could net about 82,000 votes from that central count.
If that was the case, that could be enough for Tammy Baldwin, but it may not be enough to give Kamala Harris the state of Wisconsin.
And I haven't looked at Michigan or Pennsylvania lately, but you know, the blue wall, it may hold, but I'm hearing cracks.
Go go around the horn wrapped things up about 30 seconds each to 45 seconds.
Trivia Olson, senior advisor, the Lincoln project, what's it?
Sun comes up tomorrow.
That's a thing to create 27 seconds more.
Sun comes up tomorrow. I do think, you know, at the end of the day, I think we're going to see a lot of division in the country, but I think the other thing is our adversaries.
What we're going to see around the world as a result of that is probably going to be a little turbulent.
Yeah, we haven't even talked about that. The global stage.
Trivia Olson, thank you very much, my friend, for all your work last week.
And tonight as well, we'll check it with you soon. Trivia Olson, Lincoln project, Dan Schaefer, the Ricoh-Bobbulation area.
Yeah, I think nationally, the story is that Donald Trump is winning a lot of these Tosa, or Tosa type swing states, North Carolina and Georgia.
It's going to come down to the blue wall. Maybe it was always going to come down to the blue wall.
So we'll see how things shake out in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Obviously, a lot more votes to be counted in Nevada and Arizona. Right now, it does seem like Donald Trump clearly has the edge going at this point of the evening.
And I think on the Senate side, you know, there's a number of races that have been moved into the Republican column.
It looks like Republicans will control the Senate after this election.
I think the real victory here was the friends we made along the way.
That's all I've got to close up here because it was as always, you see the volunteers that are out there.
Right.
The voters that you talked to, people have never been involved in something like this before.
They got involved in democracy. They stepped up their civic engagement.
And that is a win.
Many thanks to Corey Hartman, Jamie Martinson, Chris Geese, Chris Casper, Aaron Zommers, all the engineers.
I'm not saying quickly enough here.
You
