“This is the craziest primary election I have ever even heard tell of, much less watched up-close,” said Wisconsin Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki.
“Fifty years from now, there will be some campaign somewhere on planet Earth where the polls have you down 20 plus points, and some old guy in a back room will call the staff together and say, ‘Kids, let me tell you about the David Crowley comeback.’”
Hong haunted by past posts
Hong, a 37-year-old chef and state lawmaker, led Crowley by more than 20 points in Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) averages as voters headed to the polls.
But when the race was called after midnight on Wednesday, Crowley eked out a win with 39.83 percent of the vote to Hong’s 39.35 percent, according to DDHQ tallies.
“I think it is impossible to ignore the fact that Hong may have just shot herself in the foot with her national TV rounds over the last couple weeks of the campaign, and that becoming the story,” said DDHQ chief elections analyst Geoffrey Skelley. “I think she maybe she wasn’t, sort of, ready for primetime.”
In the run-up to the primary, Hong was hounded by scrutiny over some of her old social media posts, including calls to “defund the police” and “cancel Thanksgiving.” She walked back the remarks, but the chatter added fuel to some Democrats’ fears that she and other far-left candidates could help Republicans paint the party at large as too extreme.
Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager on former Vice President Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, credited the state lawmaker for having “mobilized and inspired people, built momentum, picked smart issues to differentiate herself” in a post on the social platform X.
But he also noted that Hong’s social media controversy cost her some votes in the end, adding that “the combination of the old tweets and the not-quite-running-away-from-the-old-tweets set off the ‘she can’t win alarms’ that still motivate dem voters. Aperture on who dem primary voters is wider, but it has its limits...”
More polls, more problems
The gulf between the pre-primary polls showing Hong well ahead and the election night results that put her a hair behind Crowley have sparked questions about what pollsters and other election observers missed in the numbers.
Pollster Nate Silver floated in a post on X that some Democratic primary polls were “missing a lot of working-class, ‘less online’ (but by no means necessarily white) voters.”
He and other analysts also suggested that the race’s late shift from a multi-candidate contest to what was effectively a two-way race between Hong and Crowley made polling more difficult. The race winnowed after Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D) both ended their bids in July, and Crowley briefly suspended his bid the same month.
Skelley also pointed out that primary polls are more prone to error than those for a general election, especially in a state like Wisconsin, where voters don’t need to register to participate in the primaries.
“We know that polling, for the last couple of cycles, has been a little hit-or-miss,” Zepecki added,
The strategist pointed to Michigan, where polls had overestimated how well Democrat Abdul El-Sayed would perform in the Senate primary.
“There is always higher variance in primaries than in general elections because this country and this state are so polarized by partisanship. … It doesn’t mean that polling doesn’t have value, but how many times have you heard a pollster say these are all snapshots in time?” Zepecki said. “Also, maybe this is a one-off. When’s the last time you saw a poll off by 20?”
Strong progressive turnout wasn’t enough
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — the most high-profile and prominent democratic socialists in U.S. politics — declined to offer endorsements for Hong, which raised eyebrows. But that didn’t stop the base from turning out to support her.
“You did have a huge turnout on the progressive side, and you also had a huge turnout of ... kind of institutional moderate Democrats behind Crowley,” said Jared Leopold, a former communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “And so I think that either way, that bodes well for Democrats in November.”
Hong became a Democratic frontrunner with the help of a highly energized ground game, revving up grassroots support, engaging with voters offline and exciting voters with her anti-establishment pitch.
Notably, Hong didn’t spend on traditional TV ad buys — forking up just $300,000 for any paid media, as reported by Wisconsin Politics, and focusing on digital. Two groups backing Crowley spent more than $3 million on ads, focused on TV, according to Politico. Across the aisle, now-GOP nominee Tom Tiffany reportedly spent more than $7 million on media, including roughly $4 million on TV.
“Hong’s campaign was clearly a very, very grassroots organization-minded race,” Skelley said, noting Republicans spent big to boost Hong in the final weeks of the campaign.
The Republican Governors Association was behind a $2.2 million TV ad campaign that accused Hong of opposing Trump’s agenda and pushing Wisconsin to return to its “progressive roots,” Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
“In that sense, she actually had just about as much advertising as Crawley did at the end of the day,” Skelley said.
Regardless, the energy behind her and other progressive candidates “is not going anywhere,” said Zepecki, pointing to the gubernatorial primary’s narrow margin.
“Anybody who thinks that winning a statewide primary by 3,000 votes means the Hong part of the coalition is going to just learn its lesson and fall in line is misreading the reality,” he continued.
“It is now the work of the Crowley campaign and everyone in the pro-democracy, left-center, and center-right, to understand that there is a new force in our politics. It is younger. It is more progressive, and it is sick and tired of what they’ve been getting.”
‘A lot of things go right’ for Crowley
Progressives had looked to the Wisconsin gubernatorial race for another boost to their midterm scorecard — and for the DSA, the statewide win could have been a key sign of the far-left movement’s traction beyond blue cities.
“Hong losing is certainly a disappointment for the left of the Democratic Party and the left more broadly, because it seemed like you’re about to have an out-and-out DSA member be the nominee for a major party in one of the key battleground states in the country,” Skelley said.
Crawley “had to have a lot of things go right” to upset Hong’s momentum: from the last-minute reshuffling of the race, including his own brief campaign suspension, to some Democrats’ enduring concern about the electability of progressives like Hong in the general election.
But as Democratic divides over the party’s broader direction rage on, Wisconsin Democrats quickly sought to unify after the contentious primary, with members of the party holding a unity breakfast on Wednesday, which included Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Hong and Crowley, among others.
Hong congratulated Crowley in a post on Wednesday, saying she fully supported him as he takes on Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) in the fall while maintaining that her campaign “was not about getting one person into office.”
“It is about building a movement for permanent affordability and a government that puts working people first. Our movement is strong, and the work isn’t done,” she added.
Democrats in Michigan held similar unity events last week after the contentious primary for Sen. Gary Peters’s (D-Mich.) seat – highlighting how the party is keenly aware that divisions within their ranks could roil their chances of winning the House and even flipping the Senate in November.
The Milwaukee County executive gave his opponent a shoutout during his victory speech, saying “her campaign reminded people across Wisconsin that there are no long shots when it comes to believing in a better future and fighting to expand opportunities to every family.”
