By: Brandon S.
With the election finally over and done with (thank goodness), incumbent Barrack Obama defeated challenger Mitt Romney for the presidency of the United States. As of now, Obama won 303 electoral votes compared to Romney’s 206.Obama also won the popular vote 50% to 48%, or 3 million votes in the nation.
As I’m sure most of us know, Wisconsin was one of the many battleground or swing states in the election. In 2008, we ended up going democratic, as we normally have, and voting for Obama. We normally are a swing state, and we normally end up going democratic, as we did in the 2012 election as well. With this being said, what confuses me, and probably confuses some of you as well, is how we were so passionate and supportive of Scott Walker, a republican, for two elections within the last couple years. Not only did we vote republican for the governor race, but during the 2010 Wisconsin general election, there were five statewide races, for Governor, U.S. Senate, Treasurer, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. In 4 of the 5 statewide races, Wisconsinites chose republicans. And when the recall election came up in June 2012, we again reaffirmed our support for our republican governor.
Yet when it came time to vote again for a senator and a president in 2012, we voted democratic again. Even after Walker has helped our state tremendously in the last two years, by cutting our deficit and saving the state millions of dollars, we go back to democrats like Baldwin and Obama? [I’m neither republican nor democratic by the way]
A political science professor from UW Madison, Barry Burden, says that part of the reason could be that both of the candidates, meaning Obama in 2012 and Walker in the recall election, were incumbents and that people were willing to give them credit for the work they had done and also give them time to finish the job. Another reason for this odd trend comes from Governor Walker himself. He says “What that tells me is that voters in this state are independent. They listen race by race to what the candidates have to offer” (NBCNews.com). This is also a valid point, seeing as how we swing from red to blue between elections frequently. However you’d think that because the person running for Vice President under the Romney ticket is from Wisconsin and has been elected to the House in Wisconsin that the GOP would have an edge in our state. Well, who knows? Wisconsin seems to be a democratic state when it comes to presidential elections, but that doesn’t mean we always vote that way, like California.
One more notable fact is the margins for each election. The 2010 general election, the 2012 recall election, and the 2012 general election all had margins within 6% for the popular vote. Neither party won more than 53% of the popular vote for each election, meaning that each race was close and it most likely could have gone either way, as it will most likely continue to do so in upcoming elections in Wisconsin.
I agree that Walker has help our state out in the past couple of years but with that being said maybe Tommy Thompson and Mitt Romney just weren't as strong as Walker was in his election. Or maybe Walker wasn't going up as strong as competition as the others, I'm not sure but it's just a thought.
ReplyDeleteYou made a good point Simmons, it is pretty strange that Wisconsin leaned more toward Scott Walker and the republican side in the recall election, but ended up going for Obama in the presidential election. It's even more strange that Paul Ryan was from Wisconsin, and actually didn't end up winning over Wisconsin. But in the past Wisconsin has voted for democratic parties, so it shouldn't be too surprising.
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