We Don't Know Who the WI Democrat Nominee Is Yet, but We Do Know the Polls Were Wrong Again

It is now just after midnight in Wisconsin, and we do not yet know who won the Democrat primary for governor. But what we do know is that — once again — the polls were horribly, embarrassingly wrong.

Much in the same way that polls grossly overestimated Abdul El-Sayed's popularity in Michigan, the polls that told us Francesca Hong was a lock for this race ended up misreading the room. At the time of this writing, with 94 percent of the vote in, David Crowley leads Hong by just 0.4 percent.

DDHQ Race Update (est. 94% in): Wisconsin Governor Democratic Primary

David Crowley (D): 297,712 (40.0%)
Francesca Hong (D): 294,650 (39.6%)
Kelda Roys (D): 56,649 (7.6%)

Follow more results here:https://t.co/FvSUeSn4oo pic.twitter.com/NPLW0gRZmI

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) August 12, 2026

Now, it's possible Hong ekes out a very narrow victory. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots have yet to be counted in Milwaukee County, Crowley's home turf, where he won in-person voting by just a few hundred votes.

Those results will take a while because the City of Milwaukee has messed up the process and we can expect the delay to be long.

UPDATE: There will be a very long delay to the Milwaukee upload. Five of the USB sticks were missing results from the election.

Election officials have to go back to the absentee facility to get the results again.

— Alexander Shur (@AlexanderShur) August 12, 2026

Steve Kornacki is slowly losing his mind https://t.co/84sA7npIg4 pic.twitter.com/7J2xXbuksN

— Jessy Han (@hjessy_) August 12, 2026

These are the same pollsters that said Kamala Harris would be the next president, including Ann Selzer, who claimed days before the election that Harris would win Iowa — Iowa — by three.

I thought Hong was 100% going to still win because she made up a ton of ground in the last 20% of the vote that came in but Crowley’s holding steady with a 0.5% lead and Dane County is 92% reporting

This is going to be really close. Way bigger polling miss than Michigan

— Swann Marcus (@SwannMarcus89) August 12, 2026

So while we don't yet know who the winner of the Democrat primary is, we do know who the losers are: the pollsters and the so-called journalists who treat polling as gospel truth.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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