The polling indicated Hong’s win was a foregone conclusion, and it would be by double digits. Large double digits.

And yet she lost – by a small margin, but a loss. The Democrat establishment breathes a sigh of relief, and the GOP is unhappy because she was considered easy to beat.

Her voters may be angry enough to stay home in November. Then again, they may rouse themselves to vote for Crowley in order to avoid the big bad GOP.

This may be a good time to note that Hong was one of the worst candidates I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just talking about her DSA idiocy or her Thanksgiving angst or her saying she is “white adjacent” because she has a half-white son. Those things are terrible, and there were plenty more where those came from. But what I’m referring to is her extreme vocal fry, like gravelly chalk on a blackboard, and her complete lack of dynamism.

There’s a pattern emerging between this contest and the one in Michigan that was won by El-Sayed. Although in the case of Wisconsin the DSA candidate narrowly lost and in Michigan the DSA-adjacent 🙂 candidate narrowly won, in both races the polls were terrible predictors and in both the DSA- candidates were considered way way ahead. Were the polls just bad, or was there fraud in Wisconsin (and I suppose there could have been both)? After all, in these races the DSA people were running against the Democrat establishment that controls the vote-counting, not with it.

Take a look at the Wisconsin polls for the race. Even as recently as 8/7, Hong was extremely far ahead. What happened? You can see the basis for fraud allegations in this article; judge for yourself.

What I think is that most of the electorate wasn’t familiar with how awful Hong was until shortly before the primary vote, and when they learned of her previous statements and her extremist views they changed their minds. I don’t think fraud was necessary, although it’s certainly strongly possible. One of the reasons I tend to think the result wasn’t fraudulent is that I followed the vote-reporting very closely, checking last night every twenty minutes or so starting about an hour after the polls had closed, and Crowley was ahead all the way. At all points his lead more or less resembled his ultimate victory margin, although it waxed and waned somewhat. He took a small lead early and he kept it for the duration. I saw no evidence of vote-dumping there.

What’s most upsetting is that Hong almost won, and in a purple state like Wisconsin. Very sobering. However, we’ve become used to the extremism of the Democrat base this voting cycle.