Wisconsin State Supreme Court race turning out to be a nailbiter: Who will win?

Hours have passed since the polls closed in Wis­con­sin, but even with hun­dreds of thou­sands of votes tal­lied and report­ed, it remains unclear what will hap­pen in the Bad­ger State’s much-watched Supreme Court race.

As of 8:10 PM, the race was extreme­ly close, with incum­bent David Pross­er (who is of the same ide­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sion as Scott Walk­er) hold­ing a slim lead of less than three thou­sand votes. He and his chal­lenger, JoAnne Klop­pen­burg, each have rough­ly half of the votes that have been tab­u­lat­ed so far:

Pross­er: 411,891
Klop­pen­burg: 409,291

The dif­fer­ence is present­ly just 2,600 votes.

Bal­lots have been tab­u­lat­ed in 1,877 of Wis­con­sin’s 3,630 precincts. That means we’re about halfway through the count.

Mean­while, the Mil­wakuee Coun­ty exec­u­tive race has turned into a full-fledged blowout. Demo­c­rat Chris Abele has 61% of the vote with 88% report­ing. He’s unques­tion­ably on his way to vic­to­ry over Repub­li­can Jeff Stone.

(Read­ers who have famil­iar­ized them­selves with Scott Walk­er, the insti­ga­tor of the lat­est cam­paign in the right wing’s war on work­ing fam­i­lies, may recall that he was pre­vi­ous­ly the Mil­wau­kee Coun­ty Exec­u­tive, and used that office as a step­ping­stone to the gov­er­nor’s mansion).

Klop­pen­burg is also com­fort­ably win­ning in Mil­wau­kee Coun­ty. She’s doing even bet­ter in Dane Coun­ty, where the state cap­i­tal of Madi­son is locat­ed. Prosser’s strong­holds appear to be in the north­west­ern part of the state.

UPDATE, 8:26 PM: JoAnne Klop­pen­burg has final­ly tak­en the lead after nar­row­ly trail­ing all night long. We’ll see whether it lasts.

Pross­er: 514,475
Klop­pen­burg: 515,891

JoAn­ne’s lead is just 1,416 votes. It’s very ten­u­ous. Expect to see some trad­ing of the lead over the next hour or so.

UPDATE, 8:47 PM: Well, we’ve seen lead-trad­ing, but at present, Klop­pen­burg is ahead by a few thou­sand votes, and it’s pos­si­ble she could pull this out… but it’ll be close. Very, very close. There are many bal­lots still left to count.

Pross­er: 575,930
Klop­pen­burg: 583,113

(2815/3630 precincts reporting)

UPDATE, 9:21 PM: After a peri­od of what seemed like non­stop updates (new num­bers every minute or less), we’ve final­ly hit a lull. Klop­pen­burg remains in the lead, but only by a slim mar­gin. At one point, she was ahead by tens of thou­sands of votes, but Pross­er has large­ly closed the gap. It is still a tight race.

Pross­er: 674,009
Klop­pen­burg: 677,371

(3285/3630 precincts report­ing, or about 90%)

UPDATE, 10:16 PM: About an hour has gone by since I last updat­ed this post. Prosser’s had the lead for a while. It’s grown, and it’s shrunk. We’re kin­da back to where we were when I start­ed this post in terms of the gap. Obvi­ous­ly, the total num­ber of bal­lots count­ed has gone way up.

Pross­er: 724,859
Klop­pen­burg: 723,175

(3533/3630 precincts report­ing, or about 97%)

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE, 11:09 AM: It took a long time, but JoAnne Klop­pen­burg final­ly regained the lead late last night. At this point it looks like we’re def­i­nite­ly head­ed for a recount.

Pross­er: 739,043
Klop­pen­burg: 739,379

(3629/3630 precincts report­ing, near­ly 100%)

Klop­pen­burg’s lead is just two hun­dred and thir­ty-five votes.

We’ve pub­lished a map on In Brief, cre­at­ed by the Wis­con­sin State Jour­nal, that shows the coun­ty-by-coun­ty break­down. It clear­ly pin­points the pro­gres­sive and con­ser­v­a­tive areas of the state.

The only precinct left to report, from Jef­fer­son Coun­ty, will like­ly favor Pross­er, the Jour­nal reports. But there are sup­pos­ed­ly absen­tee bal­lots that also must be counted.

This brings back mem­o­ries from 2004 (when we had our own razor-thin and hot­ly dis­put­ed guber­na­to­r­i­al race here in Wash­ing­ton) and 2008 (when Al Franken nar­row­ly tri­umphed over Norm Cole­man in Minnesota).

This cer­tain­ly was an elec­tion for the his­to­ry books.