Here’s the good news: Wisconsin voters decided that Francesca Hong was too nutty for them.

The bad news? Wisconsin had some vote count snafus, and the polls that showed Hong running away with the primary vote were very, very wrong. In fact, they were significantly off to the point that the pollsters have some explaining to do. And it wasn’t just one outlier poll, like when Ann Selzer said in 2024 that Iowa was going to go to Kamala Harris. It was every single poll that showed Francesca Hong in the lead.

Last 5 Wisconsin Governor Democratic Primary Polls

State Navigate: 🔵 Hong +22
Public Policy Polling: 🔵 Hong +18
Marquette University: 🔵 Hong +25
State Navigate: 🔵 Hong +29
Public Policy Polling: 🔵 Hong +20

Results (88% Reporting): 🟡Crowley +0.5 pic.twitter.com/FRqVIOiVT1

— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) August 12, 2026

The polls ranged from putting Hong anywhere from 11 to 22 points ahead in the primary. She lost by less than half a percentage point. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you are on – that is an extraordinarily bad miss by the pollsters.

And it has resulted in Wisconsin picking the saner of the two options.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly upset Democratic socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary Tuesday night, despite polls showing Hong in front by double-digits in the final stretch before polling day.

Crowley’s campaign said the 37-year-old state legislator and member of the Democratic Socialists of America called Crowley early Wednesday to concede the race. Hong trailed her rival by more than 3,200 votes out of more than 787,000 ballots cast as of 6 a.m. ET., a margin of 0.41 percentage points.

Under Wisconsin law, Hong could have requested a recount since she trailed by under one percentage point, but would have had to pay for it since her deficit was greater than 0.25 percentage points. State law does not provide for automatic recounts in close races.

Crowley, 40, was the late choice of Wisconsin’s Democratic establishment after Lt. Gov Sara Rodriguez and her predecessor Mandela Barnes dropped out of the race in recent weeks. Crowley had initially dropped out and endorsed Rodriguez last month, but re-entered the race in an effort to stop Hong after Barnes quit.

Imagine how differently this race would have played out if the polls had been close to accurate. Would all of these other Democrats quit? Would the party have consolidated behind Crowley in an effort to block Hong? Would Hong had hidden her craziness better if she had known the race was closer? Would national Democratic Socialists have continued to avoid her, or would they have made an effort to campaign for her? Would she have stayed away from hateful assholes like Hasan Piker and Ilhan Omar if the polls reflected what we saw on Election Day? This misread by pollsters should be a warning to other DSA candidates running under the Democrat banner, and is reflected in the polling misreads in Michigan as well.

Meanwhile, Hasan Piker is throwing a temper tantrum that he didn’t get his way.

Hasan Piker ends off his stream by melting down over Francesca Hong’s defeat and threatening the establishment

“The knives will be out” pic.twitter.com/Gzd4KUO81B

— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) August 12, 2026

Yep, he’s a totally stable individual who is coping beautifully with defeat.

However, there are some issues that popped up on Election Day, and it involved tabulating the votes.

The city of Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez said they discovered five of the nine flash drives brought to central count had the audit log downloaded and not the results.

“It’s a human error,” Gutierrez said.

They had to go back to the operations center at central count to redownload the results from five machines. The results will then be sent back to the Milwaukee County Courthouse to be reuploaded.

Gutierrez said nearly 15,000 ballots have yet to be counted.

When asked by WISN 12 News’ Hannah Hilyard if this was all as simple as somebody pressing the wrong button, Gutierrez said, “correct.”

At 12:08 a.m., the Associated Press is reporting 94% of Wisconsin votes have been counted with David Crowley leading Francesca Hong by over 3,000 votes for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin Governor. Tom Tiffany won the Republican nomination for governor in Wisconsin.

Around 1:05 a.m., Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson announced the results for Milwaukee. David Crowley finished with 65,131 votes (43.04 %). Francesca Hong finished with 62,739 votes (41.46%). Therefore, Crowley finished with 2,392 more votes than Hong.

This led to some extremely awkward pauses in election coverage, and more than a little disbelief on NBC.

bro is PISSED 😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/Hnf1FLuYm9

— nathan🇵🇷🥥🌴 (@naaycoqui) August 12, 2026

So… was this simple “human error”? Or was this Milwaukee County making sure that Crowley had more votes than Hong? I say, let the DSA and their fellow travelers have at the election apparatus if they truly believe fraud was at play. It’s also equally likely that the Milwaukee election officials screwed up.

The Democrats may have played every last card to make sure David Crowley won in Wisconsin, but that doesn’t guarantee him anything in November, as Ed Morrissey on Hot Air points out.

The party got what it wanted, but in the worst possible way. Their rescue of the hapless David Crowley and his own inept campaign will stick in the craw of DSA and progressive activists. The narrowness of the loss makes the establishment intervention even more obvious and (in their minds) egregious. Hong still got over 310,000 votes in the primary, and a significant part of that electorate will walk away and may not come back in time for the November election, in a state where no one wins with dramatic leads, and again, in a state Trump won two years ago. Also, the establishment may have won by beating Hong, but their prize is a candidate who couldn’t run a competent campaign on his own and who only returned when the party co-opted it as a desperate last resort.

Tom Tiffany probably preferred to run against Hong, whose ludicrous track record would have tubed the Democrat ballot from top to bottom. Unlike (Mike) Rogers (in Michigan), Tiffany didn’t get the best possible outcome with a politically damaged radical as his final opponent. However, Tiffany got the next best thing: a politically damaged incompetent who has almost zero chance of uniting his base after this sorry episode. In contrast, Tiffany got over 95% of the GOP vote last night in a race that barely caused him to break a sweat, allowing Tiffany to prepare for the general election against whomever the Democrats produced. And even without getting on the ballot, Tiffany can still use Hong as a reminder to Wisconsin voters about where the party will eventually pull Crowley, too.

The general election race for governor is highly winnable for Tom Tiffany and the Republicans. The infighting and finger-pointing on the “big tent” Democrat side will definitely be a factor in the race. Nothing is guaranteed, and Tiffany will have to campaign effectively in purple state Wisconsin to win. But the implosion on the left certainly will help him. Regardless, the DSA getting body-checked by establishment Democrats is a GOOD thing, because in a two-party system, it is better that the alternative not be a crazy holiday-hating socialist loon.

Featured image via Pixabay CC0 1.0 license