Big Blue Badger

As I hinted yesterday, the results from Wisconsin were staggering for Obama, compared to past Democratic performance. He flipped 32 counties from '04 and won statewide by 13 points. The map at left gives you a sense of where the greatest upticks took place. As I've been saying for a long time, the key for Wisconsin Dems is not just Milwaukee and Madison, its the Mississippi River counties. You can see the big Obama performance there.

Also of interest to me was the voting in the city of Milwaukee. Obviously Obama was going to win big there--and he did with with 78%--but I was curious about the south side. The south side of Milwaukee has always been Democratic territory but it is the home of Milwaukee's white ethnic (mostly Polish and German) blue collar community--Joe the Plumber land, in short. In 1964, George Wallace actually kicked off his campaign at Serb Hall, one of the south side's venerable gathering spots and home to a wicked Friday night fish fry. Given what we saw during the primaries in Chicago (see post here) I wondered whether McCain might actually win parts of the south side. Well, now that we've got some data, it appears that Obama actually carried it. See the map below which shows this year's citywide vote in comparison to 2004. McCain may have actually won some individual precincts here but until that data becomes available, we can't be sure. I'll also be interested in some of the inner suburbs that come off the south side--Greenfield, West Allis--to how Obama performed.

Lots more Wisconsin analysis to come.

Maps courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.