Wisconsin Aftermath

Democrats managed to win just two state Senate seats in Wisconsin yesterday, falling short of the three they needed to take back control of the state Senate. It was a disappointing, but hardly surprising outcome, after all, these Republicans had survived the 2008 blue wave.

The thing that stood out to me as I'm looking over the results this morning is the incredible accuracy of Public Policy Polling in the races they polled, check it out (actual results in parenthesis):

SD-32
Jennifer Shilling (D): 54 (55)
Dan Kapanke (R-inc): 43 (45)
(MoE: ±3.4%)

SD-18
Jessica King (D): 48 (51)
Randy Hopper (R-inc): 49 (49)
(MoE: ±2.7%)

SD-10
Shelly Moore (D): 42 (42)
Sheila Harsdorf (R-inc): 54 (58)
(MoE: ±2.7%)

SD-14
Fred Clark (D): 47 (48)
Luther Olsen (R-inc): 50 (52)
(MoE: ±2.8%)

Everyone they had at 50% and over won their race and they weren't off by more then a couple of points on any of the races. For unprecedented state legislature recall elections happening in the summer they got about as close as could possibly be expected.

So kudos to PPP for doing excellent work and for anyone still skeptical of the automated polling concept, take note, some automated pollsters are not as sloppy and methodologically unsound as Rasmussen is.