Todd Stevens over at UW-Madison’s The Daily Cardinal seems to think so. As “proof”, he cites John Sharpless’ close loss to Tammy Baldwin in the 2000 2nd Congressional District race.
Allow me to retort. While we will have to wait until mid-December for the Government Accounability Board to release the certified ward-by-ward results, CNN has the county-by-county numbers for both the governor’s race and the 2nd Congressional race. There are three counties entirely in the 2nd (Dane, Green and Columbia), and three other counties with significant portions in the 2nd (Jefferson, with almost 58% of the populace in the 2nd, Sauk, with a bit short of 52% in, and Rock, with virtually everything except the city of Janesville in, or just over 46% of the populace). In addition, the 2nd has the bulk of the part of Whitewater that is in Walworth County. Let’s take a look at the percentages of the vote Baldwin received versus the percentages losing Democrat gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett received in each of the counties that make up virtually all of the 2nd:
Dane: Baldwin 66.5%, Barrett 68.7%
Green: Baldwin 51.1%, Barrett 50.7%
Columbia: Baldwin 47.0%, Barrett 47.5%
The three whole counties combined: Baldwin 64.1%, Barrett 66.0%
Rock (entire county for Barrett, everything except Janesville for Baldwin): Baldwin 53.2%, Barrett 53.5%
Jefferson (entire county for Barrett, the western portion for Baldwin): Baldwin 47.7%, Barrett 38.3%
Sauk (entire county for Barrett, the eastern portion for Baldwin): Baldwin 51.6%, Barrett 49.3%
All 6 counties: Baldwin 61.8%, Barrett 60.8%
Would Todd call Scott Walker, who won statewide by almost 6 percentage points, a “bad” candidate because he got a lower percentage of the vote in the three counties entirely in the 2nd Congressional District than Chad Lee? Really?
