Wisconsin Gubernatorial Race Moves to Leans Democratic After the Establishment’s Great Escape; Other Primary Takeaways; Rating Changes in Montana and Ohio

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D) did just enough down the stretch of the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary to edge out far-left state Rep. Francesca Hong (D).

— Crowley enters the fall campaign as a modest favorite to hold the Wisconsin governorship for Democrats. If Hong had won, the race would have remained a Toss-up.

— The tally of House incumbent primary losers, already high, increased on Tuesday as Rep. John Larson (D, CT-1) was swamped. Meanwhile, South Carolina Republicans set up a Senate runoff in two weeks as appointed Sen. Darline Graham (R) attempts to hang onto her late brother’s seat.

— The Montana Senate race moves further toward Republicans, while Rep. Max Miller’s (R, OH-7) embattled reelection bid becomes a Toss-up.

Table 1: Crystal Ball gubernatorial, Senate, and House rating changes

The establishment strikes back in Wisconsin

After Democratic primary voters in Michigan made a couple of choices last week that could make it harder for their party in key Senate and House races, Wisconsin Democrats—by the skin of their teeth—made a choice that should make their lives easier in November.

Following a crazy campaign in which establishment Democrats sought to prevent state Rep. Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialists of America member who has made a litany of kooky statements, from grabbing the party’s gubernatorial nomination, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D) consolidated enough of the non-Hong vote to narrowly edge her out, 39.8%-39.3%. This came after Crowley briefly left the race in July; at the time, it seemed like Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez (D) might emerge as the “Stop Hong” candidate, but her candidacy imploded over campaign finance problems. She dropped out, and later so too did former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D)—who had his own problems—after Gov. Tony Evers (D) welcomed Crowley back into the race and endorsed him.

Leading up to Election Day, polls showed Hong with a big lead, but Crowley rallied, leading by tenuous margins for much of Election Night before the belated release of Milwaukee’s absentee votes made it clear that Hong had no path to overtake his small lead. What exactly happened with the polls is hard to say: It may be the case that the white progressives who power left-wing candidates are responding to polls at greater rates, which may skew the results even with weighting. Wisconsin, like Michigan, does not have registration by party, so its primaries are open, and figuring out who is going to vote from year to year is a real challenge. This also was, as we just said, a crazy race, and there likely was a lot of change in the closing days. It may have even been the case that progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s (D) victory in the Michigan Senate primary, and subsequent Democratic handwringing about his electability, contributed to a shift toward Crowley in Wisconsin. Aside from the fact that Hong did not run any of her own television ads, the media hits that she did during the final stretch of the campaign did not dispel the notion that she would have been a very risky nominee for Democrats. All in all, the Democratic “establishment” has clearly taken some hits this cycle, but party leaders retain the ability to nudge voters.

In what was reminiscent of how Rep. Haley Stevens (D, MI-11), another “establishment” Democratic candidate, held up much better than what her polling suggested last week, Crowley carried a majority of the state’s counties. Both Crowley and Hong carried their home counties, Milwaukee and Dane, respectively, although they each did so by margins that could be called underwhelming, at least with pre-election expectations in mind. Map 1 shows Milwaukee County, which illustrates some fascinating granular cross-currents; both the city itself and the balance of the county narrowly went for Crowley. Crowley’s coalition included the city’s Black wards, and he also posted a relatively strong showing in more established and monied neighborhoods along the county’s North Shore. Meanwhile—and in a way similar to how we found the aforementioned El-Sayed held up in Detroit—the pro-Hong coalition showed up in younger, whiter areas of the county as well as the city’s Latino pockets. Crowley carried Milwaukee proper by 2,300 votes out of the 85,000 it cast and carried the remainder of the county by about 100 votes out of 66,000 it cast. Map 1 shows raw vote margins in Milwaukee city by its aldermanic districts and groups the rest of the county by municipalities.

Map 1: Milwaukee County in the 2026 Democratic gubernatorial primary

But, for as intriguing as Milwaukee County was, arguably the most crucial county, as Semafor’s Dave Weigel has long put it, was next door: Waukesha County, a blue-trending but historically GOP area, was the only county where Crowley netted more raw votes (about 5,400) than his statewide raw vote margin (about 3,800, as of mid-day Wednesday). Crowley’s strength in the Milwaukee suburbs, the “WOW” counties of Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee, helped compensate for Hong’s victories in other major population centers, such as La Crosse, Eau Claire, and the “BOW” counties of Brown (Green Bay), Outagamie (Appleton), and Winnebago (Oshkosh).

The establishment’s great escape in Wisconsin makes the Democrats modest favorites to start the November campaign: The Wisconsin gubernatorial race moves from Toss-up to Leans Democratic following Crowley’s victory. Crowley will face Rep. Tom Tiffany (R, WI-7), who was only lightly opposed in his own primary. Tiffany is not a moderate: He’s a member of the House Freedom Caucus and has backed President Trump’s bogus claims about the 2020 presidential election, including voting against certifying the 2020 presidential results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. But he may have been seen as the more moderate candidate if his opponent had been Hong, who “is a font of zany liberal, faculty lounge exotica,” as top Democrat David Axelrod put it recently. Unlike Michigan’s El-Sayed, who holds or has held a lot of left-wing views that may hurt him in a general election but also seems to have a fair amount of political talent, Hong didn’t display much political dexterity in trying to explain away her past positions, such as a tortured response to a question asking if she really wants to cancel Thanksgiving.

Tellingly, neither Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY-14), arguably the two most prominent national leaders of the Democrats’ progressive wing, endorsed Hong despite having had many opportunities to do so. They enthusiastically backed El-Sayed in Michigan last week. So even they seemed skittish about Hong, as Politico noted right before the primary.

A key factor in our decision to start Crowley as a general election favorite is that Republicans have had a challenging time in Wisconsin since the 2024 election. Democratic-aligned candidates easily won state Supreme Court races the last two Aprils, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, both Republicans, are retiring, along with some key Republican state legislators who represent battleground districts in both chambers of the Republican-controlled state legislature. While individual members surely had their own reasons for retiring, collectively the retirements did not suggest Republican confidence heading into this year’s elections. With Crowley in place, whose greatest attribute is simply that he is a much more “generic Democrat” than Hong, Democrats are better-positioned to both hold the governorship and compete for majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Wisconsin will also host one of the nation’s top House races this fall, as voters set up a rematch between Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R, WI-3) and 2024 nominee Rebecca Cooke (D) in a western Wisconsin seat that voted for Donald Trump by about 7.5 points.

Elsewhere last night:

— In South Carolina, appointed Sen. Darline Graham (R) finished first in an unusual primary prompted by the unexpected death of her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R). Graham led Rep. Ralph Norman (R, SC-5) by a 33%-25% margin, and the pair will meet in a runoff scheduled for Aug. 25. Geographically, Graham had clear leads in the Columbia and Charleston metro areas and she also ran well in the western and southern counties of the state that fall into the Augusta, GA and Savannah, GA media markets.

Aside from his base in Charlotte’s southern exurbs, Norman’s strength in the Greenville/Spartanburg area helped him clinch a runoff spot. Though Upstate South Carolina is rich with GOP voters, it also tended to be the late Sen. Graham’s weakest region in his own primaries, suggesting that Norman’s advantage there may be durable heading into the runoff. Earlier this year, businessman Mark Lynch carried Greenville and Spartanburg counties against the late Graham—Lynch ran in yesterday’s primary but was not much of a factor, as his support clearly migrated to Norman.

Elsewhere, Rep. Russell Fry (R, SC-7) carried his Myrtle Beach-centric district but little else. Strategically, Fry may have been hurt by the prospect that his election to the Senate would leave his House seat vacant for a time during the next Congress. That concern did not apply to Norman, who was already set to leave the House after unsuccessfully running for governor. Former Rep. Mark Sanford (R, SC-1), one of the state’s most colorful recent political characters, was also in the mix and came close to Graham in Charleston County.

Though Graham campaigned with Trump’s endorsement, and got support earlier today from fellow South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (R), it is hard to count Norman out of what could be a low turnout runoff.

— In another Democratic primary that took on a left vs. center dynamic, the more progressive Peggy Flanagan (D), Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, convincingly defeated Rep. Angie Craig (D, MN-2), who was more of a moderate and hails from a competitive although Democratic-leaning district. Flanagan will face former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya (R) in the fall in a race we still rate as Likely Democratic. Minnesota Republicans rejected Mike Lindell, a Trump-endorsed pillow salesman known for his 2020 election denialism, in favor of state House Speaker Lisa Demuth. She faces a very uphill fight against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in the Safe Democratic gubernatorial race, although she will almost certainly keep the race closer than Lindell would have.

— Luke Bronin (D), the former mayor of Hartford, easily defeated long-serving Rep. John Larson (D, CT-1) in a primary that was more about turning the page on an older incumbent than about larger ideological fights. Larson is the 11th House incumbent to lose a primary this year, a high number for a year that was not a full national redistricting cycle.

Beyond last night’s primaries, there were a few other races we wanted to update this week:

— In Montana’s open-seat Senate race, independent Seth Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, is clearly the main alternative to former U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme (R). But Alani Bankhead, the lightly-funded Democratic nominee, opted not to get out of the race in deference to Bodnar as a Monday withdrawal deadline came and went. There is a world in which Bodnar, who went the independent route in Montana instead of going with a Democratic label, could benefit from having an actual Democrat on the ballot, as it might make him seem like a more plausible independent. But every vote Bankhead gets is a vote that Bodnar isn’t getting—which is why Bodnar and his allies wanted Bankhead out, while Republicans wanted her to stay in. With the three-way dynamic set to continue, Bodnar both needs to push Bankhead’s share of the vote into the single digits while also getting a decent share of regular Republican voters in order to really push Alme. That could happen down the stretch but, as of now, Alme doesn’t seem to be in any real trouble. So we’re moving this race from Likely Republican to Safe Republican, and we’ll revisit it later this fall to see if Bodnar is making real progress in squaring what appears to be an electoral circle.

For now, the race is looking like a rerun of the 2010 Florida Senate race: now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) was elected with 49% as his main rival, then-Gov. Charlie Crist, left the GOP to run for the Senate as an independent. Crist was initially leading in some polls but finished with 30% as then-Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Democratic nominee who refused to exit the race even as it became obvious that Rubio benefitted from fractured opposition, took 20%. Bankhead may not end up matching Meek’s share, though Montana is also redder now than Florida was then, which might give Alme a higher “floor” than Rubio had.

Of the several Senate races where independents are effectively standing in for Democrats as the main alternative to Republicans, the only one that remains on our “Likely Republican” radar remains Nebraska, where 2024 nominee Dan Osborn is again running as an independent without a Democratic alternative, this time against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE).

— We said last week that we planned to move Rep. Max Miller (R, OH-7) from Leans Republican to Toss-up if he stayed in his race past a Monday deadline to be replaced on the ballot. Miller did in fact stay in despite calls for him to leave the race from some but not all top Republicans in light of serious allegations of domestic abuse made by his ex-wife, so we made that change. A couple of recent polls show Miller in a deficit against Brook Park City Councilman Brian Poindexter (D) in this Trump +11 suburban Cleveland district: Republican pollster co/efficient showed Poindexter up 47%-33%, while allies of Poindexter recently found him up 43%-35% in a poll first reported by Axios. Toss-up may be generous to the incumbent, but this is also a strange situation, and while Miller’s fundraising seems very likely to dry up, he does have personal wealth to spend on his campaign (he reportedly loaned his campaign $1 million).

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

J. Miles Coleman is the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ authoritative, nonpartisan newsletter on American campaigns and elections. He also serves as the Center’s Media Relations Coordinator. Follow him on Twitter @jmilescoleman.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.