Five recent times state’s elections full of drama
The 2020 Wisconsin presidential election had its share of drama, right down to and after the end. President Donald Trump, who in an unofficial count fell more than 20,000 votes short of Democratic challenger Joe Biden, initially threatened to call for a recount (since then, he's focused his fight on other states).
Nothing new here. When it comes to statewide races, Wisconsin is all about the drama.
The 2020 election is the fourth time in the past 20 years that the vote margin in the race for president in the state was less than 1 percentage point.
Here are some other dramatic statewide races, just from the past decade.
2011: A Supreme computer error
In one of the hardest-fought state Supreme Court races ever, JoAnne Kloppenburg looked to have a narrow lead over former Republican Assembly Speaker David Prosser. Then, two days after the election, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nikolaus announced she had found 14,315 votes that she had failed to save on her computer; the new ballot count gave the overall lead to Prosser, by nearly 7,500 votes.
2012: Less than total recall
More than 900,000 people signed petitions for a recall election against Gov. Scott Walker, after the governor and the Republican-controlled Legislature pushed through contentious changes to collective bargaining, among other measures.
For this election, however, the drama was in the recall petitions, not the balloting, with GOP challenges to thousands of signatures. Walker ended up winning easily over Democrat challenger Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, whom Walker had defeated in his first race for governor two years before. (After the election, state Democrats alleged that
Walker's campaign illegally coordinated with conservative groups; the state Supreme Court ordered an end to the investigation in 2015, shortly before Walker began his short-lived campaign for the Republican nomination for president in 2016.)
2016: Down for the recount (again)
Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 30,000 votes, but it was Green Party candidate Jill Stein who pushed for an election recount, despite getting about 1% of the vote.
On Dec. 12, 34 days after the election, the recount reaffirmed that Trump won the election, adding a whopping 131 votes to the Republican total. (The recount also uncovered no significant problems in the voting system or hacking of computers, allegations that were used to force the recount.)
2018: Close, but no recount
After the 2016 presidential election recount, Gov. Scott Walker and state GOP leaders pushed a measure through the Legislature in 2017 that limited recounts to races in which there was a 1percentage-point difference between candidates. The following year, Walker lost his reelection bid to Democrat Tony Evers by less than 30,000 votes — a margin of difference of 1.1%, meaning Walker couldn't seek a recount thanks to the new rules the GOP enacted.
2020: The COVID primary
Although the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic shut down just about everything in Wisconsin, courts ruled that the state's April 7 primary would be held as scheduled. With many poll workers wary of the health risks of an election, the city of Milwaukee ended up with just a handful of polling places, meaning long lines and, with a sharp increase in absentee ballots, delayed vote counts.