All eyes on Wisconsin: Barrett Wins?

We have watched this recall election play out for more than a year in the making. An election that is now being noted as a pre-curser to the Presidential bid in November 2012. Oddly enough, neither Presidential candidates have stepped one foot in Wisconsin, why? The stakes are to high. If either candidate ties their balloon to the campaign it could be a terrible mis-calculation.  

The winner in this contest is a toss-up. When it is all said and done the winner of this election will come down to two things: voter turnout and voter enthusiasm.  Nearly 1 million petitioners signed to recall Governor walker, who only won by a 1.1 million votes,  should tell you something.  We could add some other variables to the mix; one importantly being the sheer amount of money being poured into this election, $63 million, mostly from outside groups, outside the state, unbelievable!

Now, Walker stands in unique company: He is only the third governor in U.S. history to face a recall vote. The other two lost, most recently California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.-AP

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board forecasts a turnout today of between 2.6 million and 2.8 million voters (60-65%). (Wisconsin has a 4.3 million register voters.) That strikes some experts as high -- it would be considerably higher than the 2010 election -- but would still be well short of the 3 million who voted in 2008.

In November, black voters can be expected to turn out at a high rate for Obama, as they did in 2008. Young people also are more likely to vote in the fall, when many of them are on easily organized college campuses, than they are in June. A repeated refrain from Democrats has been that a high turnout today would presage a Barrett victory. If that prediction turns out wrong -- if turnout is unusually large and Walker wins anyway -- Democrats will have more to worry about.

It's no coincidence that Obama and Walker use a virtually identical slogan: "Forward." Both are arguing to voters that tough economic times have begun to turn and that going "backward" to the "policies of the past" would only make matters worse. Even though the policies they advocate are very different, some small but significant number of swing voters seem to be willing to give both of them the benefit of the doubt.

LA TIMES:By David Lauter

-Huffpost

It's all in the margins

Campaigns that are down by about this margin in the polls often say that there is some dynamic that the polls are not capturing. Sometimes they are making reasonable arguments, and sometimes they are just spinning. But either way, these factors are rarely enough to allow the candidate to overcome the deficit. The exceptional cases are often remembered precisely because they are rare events.

It could be that Mr. Barrett does overperform his polls, but not by enough to win. A benchmark for a superior turnout operation is that it might typically be worth an additional two or three points – fewer than the six points by which he now trails Mr. Walker in the average of surveys. 

With that said, recall elections are rare events, and it is plausible that the true margin of error in polls of recall elections is intrinsically higher than in regular contests. The results are worth watching, but it would be a true upset if Mr. Barrett were to prevail. 

538 Blog-NY TIMES-Nate Silver

If Governor Walker loses this will be a major loss to the Republican camp. If the Democrats lose this should serve as a wake call to the base, wake up!  However, since this blog is about reading tea leaves and comprising evidence which leads to a conclusion that either you will like or dislike, I believe that Barrett will win this, why?  The younger voters have not been calculated into these margins.  Most of the polls were conducted to land-lines, completely cutting out their impact, they will have an impact!