John Nichols: Wisconsin Democrats Easily Outpoll Scott Walker as Recall Race Is Set [View all]

[WI_DEM]

Walker got a lot of Republicans to the poils, winning 626,538 votes -- almost twice what he received in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary. He easily beat his GOP challenger this year, young activist Arthur Kohl-Riggs, who ran as a "Real Republican," arguing that Walker had broken faith with the true values of the party of Abraham Lincoln and the progressive reformers of a century ago.

But Walker's 626,538 was far behind the 665,436 received by Barrett, Falk, Vinehout and La Follette.

Presuming that most of the 19,920 votes cast for Kohl-Riggs will go to Barrett in the general election (while the 4,842 votes cast for a Walker-allied "fake Democrat" in the Democratic primary will go to the governor), that means that the anti-Walker vote was 55,000 votes ahead of the pro-Walker total.

Everyone agrees that turnout will be dramatically higher for the June 5 general election. And no one is predicting that Barrett will have an easy time of it running against Walker, who has raised more than $25 million, mostly from out-of-state conservative donors, and who enjoys the enthusiastic backing of right-wing blllionaires such as Charles and David Koch.

But Barrett, charged into the race, declaring Tuesday night that: "This is a historic election. We all know it's a historic election."

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167779/wisconsin-democrats-easily-outpoll-scott-walker-recall-race-set

I wouldn't say Dems 'easily outpolled' Walker. It seems Walker got a pretty high vote even though he had insignificant opposition. I think it shows that both sides are going to have a lot of intensity going into the special election next month.