Yeah, Prosser would have won if these people who voted for his opponent had voted for him or stayed home. Brilliant analysis! If you are going to try to win elections by decrying turnout, well, you have very little faith in democracy. School teachers, police, firemen, and trash collectors are citizens every bit as much as you or I. They get to vote, and this time they got to win.

Bah.

Prosser would have won by at least a 2 to 1 margin, if Walker had not over-reached.

Walker alienated 10% or more of the electorate that voted for him. That led to Prosser losing the election (at least on the first count).

Indeed, had Walker acceded on collective bargaining rights and been able to put Wisconsin on the path to solvency, he would have been a hero. He would have assured his re-election and domination of state politics by Republicans and (this is important), he would likely have been able to strip collective bargaining away in 2 years with an overwhelming amount of support.

there is a lot to be said for a politician who says: "This is my plan. I have been successful in the past, you can trust me to do what is right in the future." Walker blew his chance. Much in the way that Bush's presidency led to an Obama presidency.

The general proposition of Democrats is that Republicans cannot govern. Walker is a good example of this.

There is no mention of how Waukesha county flipped the opposite way of Dane county. It disgusts me that the Governor of Wisconsin continues in an attempt to divide Wisconsin.

Thanks for your enlightening comments. Good to know everyone else, outside of Madison, is pure as the driven snow, unbiased, open-minded, focused on the long-term, objective, with nary a sign of "self-interested intensity". Non-Madison-based people (and only Republicans) are, as implied in your comments, the only true supporters of democracy vs those beastly Madisonians like the software development techs down my street, or those business school professors two blocks away, or the church minister nearby. You might want to consider doing doing some "research," Senior Fellow at the wpRi, before loading up your ideologically-based assertions.

I've never known an election where democrats and unions became so passionately invested where there WASN'T massive voter fraud. I wonder how many dead folks, illegal immigrants and other interlopers are included in that 204 vote victory?

In agreement with Lawrence, I believe that Christian Schneider is providing a deeper analysis. His point is not to claim that poor voter turnout was the undoing for Prosser, but that such strong, unprecedented turnout in a single place (Madison), rallied behind a single cause (Collective Bargaining Rights), was the culprit. In an normal election that saw normal voting trends and voter turnout, Prosser would have won. Simply put, government employees had a reason to show up in large numbers, while the rest of the electorate was not nearly as polarized. If Madison had similar turnout trends matching the rest of the counties, which they did not because of the heavy government employee population, Prosser would have won.

Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican leadership in the House and Senate blew an opportunity to insure that Prosser had as fair a chance as possible to win this election. They could have enacted a sane voter identification law that would minimize the fraudulent electorial process that seems to pervade every Wisconsin election. It should have come to no surprise to Walker and the other Republican leaders that the Unions and public employees were going to come full charge at Prosser. They could have really helped here and for what ever reason decided that voter ID was not a priority. What state have they been living in - they let the voters of Wisconsin down on this one - and Prosser's defeat can be laid squarely on the Wisconsin Republican Party and its tepid leadership. They spent more time trying to convince the Democrats, who abandoned their oaths and walked out, to come back, and more time trying to convince the media that they(the Republicans) were good guys) than doing what they were elected to do - LEAD - THEY DROPPED THE BALL AND THE STATE NOW LOSES!!!

This from John Fund in the WSJ:

"After allegations of fraud surfaced, the Milwaukee police department's Special Investigative Unit conducted a probe. Its February 2008 report found that from 4,600 to 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.

Much of the problem resulted from Wisconsin's same-day voter law, which allows anyone to show up at the polls, register and then cast a ballot. ID requirements are minimal. The report found that in 2004 a total of 1,305 "same day" voters were invalid."

I hope someone in the GOP in Wisconsin is going to do some investigation of potential voter fraud as part of a recall/election challenge, and not just after the fact. Given the "remarkable" returns in Dane County, and the Democrat Party's history in Wisconsin elections, it would be a shame if Republicans role over on this election.

"...4,600 to 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots...." In an election decided by 204 votes out of over 1.4 million, it isn't hard to suspect that some ACORN style voter fraud may have been the difference here.

This sounds plausible, but I can't help but think the author should have accounted for the presence of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It's academics and students, in addition to public sector workers, that likely drove up voter turnout in Dane County. Not that their interests aren't aligned, but it paints a more complicated picture than public employees minding their privilege.