As I am sure you know by now, Scott Walker survived the effort to recall him yesterday by a 53-46 margin. Looks like the Marquette Law School survey, conducted by polling whiz Charles Franklin, was accurate after all, which bears watching if the state is competitive this fall (same poll shows Obama up nine over Romney in Wisconsin presently).
Wisconsin Democrats did apparently retake control of the Wisconsin Senate for the time left between now and the November elections.
There will be plenty of post mortems about why Walker won, but as Chris Cillizza suggests today, the factors probably included the incumbent’s huge financial advantage; the distraction of a Democratic primary so close to the recall; and resistance to the very idea of a mid-term recall among a crucial segment of voters.
Efforts to spin this into a harbinger of a Romney victory in the state in November, or of some general midwestern counterrevolution, should be mocked at this point. It was a bitter defeat for progressives and particularly for the labor movement, but just a battle in a longer and wider political war. I particularly would like to thank Wisconsin recall supporters for forcing national conservatives into spending so much of their 2012 war chest just holding on to a governorship they already had.
