Absentee voting is especially high in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Dane counties. Here's what that means for today's election.

As voters headed to the polls during a pandemic Tuesday, more than 860,000 absentee ballots had already been returned to Wisconsin election clerks. 

We don’t know how those people voted or what party they identify with, but we do know which counties those votes have come from.

Do these numbers offer any clues about where this election is heading?

An analysis of state election data shows a stark geographic pattern to the deluge of absentee ballots cast so far.  

The counties that are generating a disproportionately high share of the absentee vote are concentrated in populous southern Wisconsin.

In fact, the three counties at the top of this list are the state’s biggest: very Democratic Milwaukee and Dane and very Republican Waukesha.

This is not a surprise. These three counties represent the areas with the most coronavirus cases, where voters are more motivated to vote by mail rather than in person. They may also be the three most politically mobilized counties in Wisconsin. And they historically cast more of their vote by absentee ballot than any other counties in the state.

Meanwhile, the counties that are generating a disproportionately low share of the absentee vote are concentrated in northern and western Wisconsin, especially in the Republican-leaning 16-county Green Bay media market.

What do these trends mean for the marquee April race — the state Supreme Court contest between incumbent conservative Justice Daniel Kelly and his liberal challenger, Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky?

Here is one partial, hypothetical answer: If the absentee vote in every county perfectly mirrored its final vote in last year’s razor-thin, conservative vs. liberal Supreme Court race, then the regional tilt of the absentee vote reported so far would produce a narrow lead for Judge Karofsky of slightly less than one percentage point.

That is the math. But it is based on a very big hypothetical.  And it’s only one part of the picture. Any edge Karofsky gets from absentee voting could certainly be offset by election-day voting, which proceeded Tuesday after a flurry of last-minute court rulings. But none of those results will be known until Monday, because of a court-ordered delay in reporting them.

Trying to analyze the geography of the absentee vote comes with huge caveats. Absentee ballots are still being returned until Monday (they have to be postmarked by election day), and the numbers grow every day. Everything about this election is uncharted territory, from the unprecedented (for Wisconsin) level of absentee voting to the question of how many people will turn out to vote in person Tuesday during a pandemic that has shrunk the number of polling places and poll workers and created fear, confusion and uncertainty about voting.  

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That said, the geographic distribution of the absentee vote is the most concrete clue we have right now about the April vote. Voters in Wisconsin don't register by party so we don't have a partisan breakdown of the absentee vote.

Here is a closer look at the absentee numbers.

For this analysis, I used the latest data posted by the Wisconsin Elections Commission showing how many absentee ballots have been returned by each of the state’s 72 counties.

As of Tuesday, 1,282,762 ballots had been requested statewide and 864,750 had been returned. These numbers include both in-person absentee early voting and absentee ballots cast by mail, though the mix between the two kinds of absentee ballots is very different this year in Wisconsin. In the past, it reflected mostly in-person early voting. This time, because of the pandemic, it reflects mostly mail ballots, election officials say.

The level of absentee mail voting in this April election has no real precedent in Wisconsin. It already exceeds the absentee vote in the November 2016 presidential election.   

The next step in the analysis was to look at how much each county has contributed to the statewide absentee vote (the more than 860,000 returned ballots). Then I compared that to how much each county contributed to the final statewide vote in the April court race one year ago. That election was a virtual jump-ball for state Supreme Court, so it’s a handy base-line. The conservative candidate beat the liberal candidate by half a percentage point.

What the numbers show is that counties in populous southern Wisconsin — especially the biggest counties — are making up a bigger share of the April 2020 absentee vote than they did of the final statewide vote in last year’s court race.

For example, very Democratic Milwaukee County is generating 14.45% of the statewide absentee vote so far, even though it accounted for just 12.44% of the final statewide court vote in April 2019.  

Heavily Republican Waukesha County has generated 11.25% of the statewide absentee vote so far, even though it generated 9.56% of the final statewide vote in April 2019.  

And ultra-blue Dane County has generated 14.14% of the absentee vote in this election while accounting for 12.59% of the court vote last April.

In its absentee balloting, Milwaukee is outpacing its share of the 2019 vote by a bigger margin than any other county in Wisconsin, followed by Waukesha and Dane. That is probably due to a combination of reasons: Milwaukee County’s history of absentee voting, its status as the county most affected by the pandemic, and the fact that there are huge local races (for mayor and county executive of Milwaukee) that weren’t on the ballot in 2019.

Other counties that are generating a disproportionate share of the absentee vote are mostly concentrated in southeastern Wisconsin, including Washington, Racine, Walworth, Ozaukee and Kenosha (all purple or red counties).

But Milwaukee, Waukesha and Dane are in a class by themselves when it comes to generating a disproportionate absentee vote.

Because Dane and Milwaukee together are so much bigger than Waukesha, the overall effect of this southern Wisconsin skew in the absentee vote is more favorable to Karofsky than Kelly.  

Dane and Milwaukee combined account for almost 29% of the statewide absentee vote so far, even though they made up 25% of the final vote in last year’s court race.

A second reason the absentee vote skews in a liberal direction is that counties in northern, central and western Wisconsin have been generating a disproportionately small share of the absentee vote — and most of these counties lean Republican.  

The 16-county Green Bay media market has accounted for only 16.5% of the statewide absentee vote, which is significantly lower than its 19% share of the final statewide vote in April 2019.

The 11-county Wausau media market has made up only 6.6% of the state’s absentee vote so far, even though it accounted for 8% of the statewide vote in April 2019.

These two media markets voted by large margins in 2016 for President Donald Trump, who is actively supporting Justice Kelly.  And they voted by sizable margins for the conservative candidate in last year’s court race.

In fact, the numbers show that the worst Trump counties (chiefly Milwaukee and Dane) make up the most disproportionate share of the absentee vote in this election. And with some exceptions (such as suburban Waukesha and Washington), the counties Trump dominated are making up a disproportionately small share of the absentee vote.

This probably means that Justice Kelly needs to win the election-day vote, because the large absentee vote is likely to be less favorable to him.  

But what it tells us about the final outcome of the 2020 court race is open to interpretation.    

It could be that since absentee voting historically tends to skew Democratic in its geography (it did in April 2019 and November 2018), the voting clout of smaller, more Republican counties will be more fully felt in election-day voting.

That would be consistent with past races. That appears to have happened in April 2019.  And it would be consistent with what polls have shown — that Republican voters, farther from the pandemic hot spots, have lower levels of alarm about the crisis. That could make them more likely to vote in person.  

One real possibility is that Karofsky leads in the absentee vote but is overtaken by Kelly in the election-day vote.

On the other hand, absentee voting could turn out to be a better barometer of the final vote than it has been in the past because this time it will represent a much larger share of the vote. In fact, it is very likely to represent well over half the total vote. So a liberal edge in the absentee vote could be decisive. 

Milwaukee, the state’s biggest county, is a good illustration of these unknowns.

Will its election-day vote be depressed because it’s the epicenter of the pandemic in Wisconsin, because the city has been reduced to just five polling places, and because a key part of its electorate — the African American community — has been especially hit by the coronavirus crisis? Will its absentee vote be dampened because thousands of Milwaukeeans who requested ballots didn’t get them in time? Will certain kinds of Milwaukee Democrats (poorer voters, racial minorities) be underrepresented in the absentee vote, as past research suggests?    

Will the combination of big local elections and the faint semblance of a meaningful Democratic presidential primary mean that Milwaukee County plays a larger role in this court race than it did in 2019, when soft Milwaukee turnout was blamed by many Democrats for a narrow liberal defeat?

The fact that absentee ballots will continue to be counted until Monday could mean the Milwaukee absentee vote, which once appeared to be lagging, continues to grow significantly. The number of absentee ballots returned in the county took a large leap between Monday and Tuesday from 100,424 to 124,960 (out of 203,898 requests).

Every election is a test of voters’ preferences and motivation. But this election comes with far more than its share of asterisks and unknowns.  

The election-day vote unfolding Tuesday in dramatic fashion as voters try to distance themselves as they line up at the polls is a huge wild card.

Absentee voting will be the other piece of the equation.

Never has it played a bigger and more unpredictable role in a Wisconsin election.

Craig Gilbert has covered every presidential campaign since 1988 and chronicled Wisconsin’s role as a swing state at the center of the nation’s political divide. He has written widely about polarization and voting trends and won distinction for his data-driven analysis. Gilbert has served as a writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Lubar Fellow at Marquette Law School and a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he studied public opinion, survey research, voting behavior and statistics. Email him at craig.gilbert@jrn.com and follow him on Twitter: @WisVoter.