ANOTHER LOOK AT 2016 ELECTION

While we await developments on a number of critical fronts — Will the Republicans running our state ever agree on transportation funding?

Will the US Senate stumble as it tries to formulate a healthcare bill that can pass both the Senate and the House? Will the Supreme Court issue a stay in Gill v Whitford? Will James Comey’s testimony on Thursday offer the bombshell the national press is hoping for?

You might want to have a look at an analysis of How And Where Trump Won Wisconsin in 2016. Malia Jones at the UW Applied Population Laboratory has run the numbers and concludes that “lower voter turnout and community size defined the presidential vote.”

As you may already know, Trump received only about 1,000 more votes than Romney got in 2012. Hillary Clinton won about 220,000 fewer votes than Obama in 2012. Third party votes increased from just under 40,000 in 2012 to about 183,000 in 2016.

But the vote totals and turnout percentages don’t tell the whole story in sufficient detail. Read the whole piece. The author teases out important details. It’s analyses like this one that can help us thinking clearly and critically about strategies and tactics for the 2018 elections and beyond.

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