The Wisconsin Republicans may have won the battle in Wisconsin but they haven’t won the war. The “Wisconsin 14” returned to Wisconsin to a huge Saturday rally. Last night, Daily Kos released the results of polls in the 8 Republican districts where Senators are eligible for recall:
Democrats need to win three of these eight districts in order to regain a majority in the Wisconsin state Senate. As it happens, Democrats currently lead in three districts:
Senator Dan Kapanke trails a generic Democrat 55-41
Senator Randy Hopper trails 49-44
Senator Luther Olsen trails 49-47
In two other districts, incumbent Republicans are under 50%, and should face competitive elections:
Senator Rob Cowles leads 45-43
Senator Sheila Harsdorf leads 48-44
The Republican incumbent is favored in another district, but still isn’t safe:
Senator Alberta Darling leads 52-44
Republicans are strongly favored in two deep red districts:
Senator Mary Lazich leads 56-34
Senator Glenn Grothman leads 60-32
The full internals of the poll will be released today at 11 am. These results show that Democrats have a good chance at re-taking the Senate majority. Wisconsin Democrats have announced that they’ve already collected 45% of the signatures they need for a recall election.
In another sign that the Wisconsin GOP’s quick passage of the bill to roll back bargaining rights is only causing the fight to escalate, Dems have now collected over 45 percent of the signatures necessary to hold recall elections for eight GOP state senators, the Wisconsin Democratic Party tells me.
Dems have now collected over 56,000 signatures supporting the recall drives, according to party spokesman Graeme Zielinski, after another surge in organizing activity over the weekend. That’s up from rougly 14,000 after last weekend. This means Dems are well ahead of schedule: In each targeted district, Dems need to amass the required signatures — 25 percent of the number who voted in the last gubernatorial election — by a deadline of 60 days after first filing for recalls, which happened nearly two weeks ago.
In other words, Dems are reporting they are nearly halfway to the finish line, with roughly three-fourths of the alloted time remaining.
Wisconsin isn’t nearly over yet and things could get very exciting there. Hopefully Wisconsin Democrats can maintain the momentum for the next few months. Winning some recall elections would send a powerful message about the power of unions.