Brookfield Turnout Tuesday Exceeds Presidential Primary

The historic June 5 gubernatorial recall election will be all about turnout and energy, and Brookfield voters showed both Tuesday.

In a perennial Republican stronghold city that had no real GOP contest on the ballot, more Brookfield voters turned out Tuesday than they did for the presidential primary April 3 that pitted Mitt Romney against Rick Santorum.

Statewide turnout Tuesday was 30 percent.

In Brookfield it was 47 percent, up from the and city and school races.

Voting also was up from the 40 percent who voted in the last gubernatorial primary election — in September 2010 when Scott Walker faced Mark Neumann and Tom Barrett had a minor primary opponent, Tim John.

In raw numbers, 12,618 residents voted Tuesday for governor (8,890 or 70 percent votes in GOP primary; 3,478 or 30 percent votes in the Democratic primary).

In the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, 5,569 residents voted, with a the two actual Democrats. There was no Republican primary for lieutenant governor.

The big question will be how many residents will turn out on June 5. Will it be higher than the 79 percent who voted in the first Barrett-Walker showdown in November 2010?

JSOnline.com political analyst Craig Gilbert said Democrats have work to do in order to match the Republican enthusiasm displayed Tuesday — not in Dane County which turned out numbers as strong as Waukesha County but in other parts of the state where Barrett lost to Walker in 2010.

In all Tuesday, more than 1.3 million people cast ballots: about 670,000 votes for the five Democratic candidates and about 646,000 votes for the two Republican candidates, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Considering that an unknown amount of Republicans crossed over to vote in the Democratic race (and likely fewer Democrats skipped their primary to vote for Arthur Kohl-Riggs), Tuesday's results again show the purple state is in a dead heat, evenly divided between the two major parties as they battle for the June 5 prize.

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