Most of the voters streaming out of their East High School polling place mid-afternoon on Election Day were feeling upbeat. Eva, a canvasser with the Northside Action Team, said she felt “awesome” and “optimistic” and was hoping for a candidate who could advance Medicaid expansion.

Others were feeling “patriotic,” “proud,” and “tentatively hopeful.”

“You can say we just voted for the life of the party,” said Hannah, voting with her friend of the same name.

Well before midnight, Democrat David Crowley handily clinched the governor’s race over Republican Tom Tiffany, receiving 54% of the vote to 45% for Tiffany. In doing so, Crowley rode a blue wave through the midterms, winning a statewide race where Republican money outpaced Democratic spending. Coupled with legislative wins — a state Assembly and Senate newly flipped blue — the “trifecta” touted by Democrats marks an end to divided government and a new era in Wisconsin state politics.

In an unofficial tally, Crowley received 217,000 more votes than Tiffany — well beyond recent state margins for either governor or president. In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump beat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by just over 29,000 votes. Tiffany also did far worse than the 2022 Republican nominee for governor, Tim Michels, who lost to Gov. Tony Evers by about 90,000 votes.

Dane and Milwaukee counties came through as the Democratic powerhouses that they are. In 2022, 78.6% of Dane County’s total 301,033 votes went for Evers. This time, about 10,000 more voters turned out, and the percentage of Democratic voters increased to 80% (Tiffany received 1,460 fewer votes in Dane County than Michels did in 2022).

In Milwaukee County, where Evers garnered nearly 71% of the 346,889 votes in 2022, turnout was up (13,000 more votes overall) and the Democratic candidate captured more votes as well, Crowley garnering more than 75% of the vote (Tiffany received 11,838 fewer votes than Michels did in 2022).

“This win…belongs to Milwaukee, the city that raised me,” Crowley said at an election party Tuesday night in his home city.

He said his win also belonged “to every corner of this state that showed up,” and to those who “started this year backing someone else, and finished it on our team.”

“Thank you for placing your faith in me,” he added. “That’s ultimately what voting is: a tremendous act of faith, not in one person or party. But faith in the idea that elections matter. That the right leadership can make a difference in people’s lives.”

At a nonpartisan election celebration at the Black Business Hub in Madison, guests gathered to watch results come in; there were turkey tips to eat and music from DJ Ree Maniac. Natalie McDonald, who helped organize the event, said she was ready for Wisconsin to “make history.”

McDonald works at the Urban League of Greater Madison, where she spent more than 60 hours a week this summer helping register voters and educating them about what was on the upcoming ballot. She is passionate about voting: she worked as a poll worker in high school, and last year, in the city clerk’s office.

Less than an hour ahead of the race being called, McDonald described the prospect of Wisconsin’s first Black governor as “huge.”

“We’ve had nothing but white men,” she said, adding that Crowley is “literally from Milwaukee, the most segregated city in the nation, and he can now be leading Wisconsin. Like, that’s just cool, regardless of how you feel about David Crowley. That’s just cool in itself, you know?” 

Despite decisive results, some voters appeared to have waffled ahead of Election Day — according to a Marquette Law School poll released Oct. 28, when Crowley led Tiffany, 47% to 44%, 9% of registered voters were undecided just weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

That’s nearly double the share of undecided voters in the last poll before the gubernatorial election in 2022, when 5% of voters said they hadn’t chosen between Democratic incumbent Evers, Republican Michels, or independent Joan Beglinger. In 2018, when Evers faced Republican Scott Walker and Libertarian Phil Anderson, only 3% were undecided in the mid-October poll.

This time, Crowley was helped along by his primary rival, Rep. Francesca Hong. “I voted for David Crowley and Democrats down and up the ballot. Please do not write me in!” tweeted Hong on Election Day, repeating her call to Democratic voters who were upset over her loss to Crowley in August.

Her followers listened. Sue Trace, a 66-year old DeForest resident and organizer, was a “loud and proud” Hong supporter who canvassed for her and made micro-donations “every time” Hong was “attacked by an establishment Democrat.” After the primary, Trace took Hong’s advice and backed Crowley.

“It took me a while to be convinced that Crowley is acceptable, but I’m there now,” she said on Monday. “He evolved on data centers, he has always been for raising the minimum wage, and was more fiscally conservative than Walker as county exec…. He’s no Fran, but might do a great job.”

Ben Wikler, former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, praised Hong in an interview with The American Prospect ahead of Election Day. ”Not everyone who comes up short in a primary devotes themselves in this kind of wholehearted way to electing the person to win. Francesca really has, and I think that speaks to her character.”

Tiffany, backed by President Donald Trump, appears not to have been helped by the president’s endorsement. “Pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump had advised voters over and over ahead of the midterms, a risky move given that the president’s approval rating tumbled to 30% in October, according to the Pew Research Center.

Presidential favorability ratings are a “rough measure of public mood,” Matthew Pietryka, a UW-Madison political science professor who researches political behavior, political psychology, and polling, said in an interview Tuesday. It’s something pollsters first started tracking in 1938 under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration.

Rising approval rates suggests “that not only do you have the base behind you, but also lots of independents. And as it goes down, you’re seeing the opposite. When it’s at historically low rates as it is now, that’s suggesting there are a lot of people who are displeased, even those who often don’t pay all that much attention to the news,” said Pietryka. “It’s pretty hard to get an approval rating this low.”

Main culprits for Trump’s low rating include inflation, tariffs, and a war in Iran after he promised “no new wars.” Brandon Scholz, former chair of the Republican Party who left the party in 2021, said in an interview Monday that Republicans had probably been relieved that neither Trump nor a surrogate campaigned for Tiffany in Wisconsin.

But staying away was not enough to distance Trump from Tiffany, and Democrats tied the two together, pointing to Tiffany’s record of support for the president.

In a press conference following a short concession speech in Wausau Tuesday night, Tiffany took the blame for his defeat. “The responsibility for this race and us not winning as Republicans falls on me,” he said, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. “I did not deliver the message clearly enough, or lay out an agenda that the people of the state of Wisconsin said we’re going to choose you.”

Crowley, 40, is not the youngest person to be elected governor in Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s second governor, Leonard Farwell, was 32 when elected. Philip La Follette was 33 when elected to his first term in office in 1930.

But Crowley, a millennial, is more than 30 years younger than Gov. Tony Evers, who has served since 2019.

David Clarenbach, who in his time in the state Assembly from 1983-1993 helped advance gay rights, was watching national election results at a downtown Madison watch party for Attorney General Josh Kaul, who won his third term in office over Republican Eric Toney. Clarenbach said the blue wave reflected a “transitional,” “electric” and “generational” shift.

“I think about the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, how that defined a generation of political activists,” said Clarenbach. David Crowley’s win, and a Democratic sweep across the map, is proof that a new generation of politics is taking hold, he added.

They have a “whole new perspective...I hope [that] means good things for Wisconsin and for the United States.”