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Barack Obama's 11-point lead in Wisconsin is now down to four. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows Obama leading John McCain 47% to 43%. When “leaners” are included in the totals, Obama leads 51% to 44%. Last month, in the first Wisconsin poll conducted since Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama was ahead of his Republican opponent 50% to 39%. Obama is supported by 86% of Wisconsin Democrats, McCain by 95% of Republicans. Voters not affiliated with either major party are evenly divided. The Democrat leads by a 2-to-1...

Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them. Officials are reviewing some 200 to 300 fraudulent voter registration cards, Sue Edman, the commission’s executive director, said Wednesday. And even though the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now caught the fraud and reported it before the cards were turned in, the incident revived a four-year-old partisan debate over the integrity of Wisconsin’s voter registration process, as political groups step up efforts...

MADISON, Wis. -- Workers registering voters for a liberal group in Milwaukee turned in hundreds of fabricated registration forms and many more that were incomplete. That's raised fears among Republican Party leaders of an election fraud repeat. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has fired about a dozen canvassers and alerted the state election commission to most of the problem forms. Commission director Sue Edman said they'll make sure no fabricated or incomplete forms are entered into the voter database. Six of the former ACORN workers have been referred to the Milwaukee County district attorney's office...

MADISON, WI -- Wisconsin Democrats on Friday ousted a delegate to their national convention for saying she would vote for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain in November.Embarrassed by a defection in their ranks, the Wisconsin Democratic Party's administrative committee voted 23-0 to strip Debra Bartoshevich of her status as a delegate to the Denver convention next month. Bartoshevich was elected by party activists as a pledged delegate for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from the 1st Congressional District in southeastern Wisconsin. But after Clinton dropped out of the race, Bartoshevich told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she would support McCain over...

Republican John McCain is tightening the presidential race against Democratic rival Barack Obama in four key states, according to polls released Thursday.

Republican John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as the Arizona senator struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East this week. McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota while the Illinois senator has a more comfortable double-digit edge in Wisconsin, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal during the past week. Only in Colorado, however, does McCain hold a greater percentage of the...

Barack Obama Wisconsin campaign officials today used local veteran Obama backers in seeking to counter an ad by Republican presidential candidate John McCain that accuses the Democrat of shifting his views on the war in Iraq. At a press event next to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Chief Warrant Officer David Boetcher, a 27-year veteran of the Wisconsin Army National Guard, blasted McCain's voting record on veteran's health care, hospital funding, veteran's education benefits and equipping soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It shows that he's no longer voting for veterans. He's voting for something else," Boetcher said. Boetcher, a Waunakee...

Madison, WI -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain is going after the female vote by hosting a women-only town hall meeting Friday in Wisconsin. The first-of-its-kind event for the McCain campaign is the latest and most overt attempt to woo women turned off by Democrat Barack Obama's rivalry with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primaries. Obama also has been courting female voters. He and Clinton have campaigned together to help smooth over hard feelings. His wife, Michelle Obama, is holding round-table meetings with women this week, and Clinton's former director of women's outreach is now working for Obama. McCain's...

Bad news for McCain all over the map. http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x4141.xml?ReleaseID=1188 Four surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, fielded June 17-24 Colorado: Obama 49 - McCain 44, n=1,351 likely voters, margin of sampling error of +/- 2.7 percent Michigan: Obama 48 - McCain 42, n=1,411 likely voters, margin of sampling error of +/- 2.6 percent Minnesota: Obama 54 - McCain 37, n=1,572 likely voters, margin of sampling error of +/- 2.5 percent Wisconsin: Obama 52 - McCain 39, n=1,537 likely voters, margin of sampling error of +/- 2.5 percent It is time, McCain!

The New Democratic Party: Your Either With Us 100% or Against US Wisconsin Delegate Stripped Of Status For Not Supporting Obama! For the past year on the campaign trail we have heard speech after speech from Senator Obama calling for a change in Washington politics and claiming that he can end the polarization in Washington. However, less than 2 weeks after becoming the presumptive nominee the message from the Democratic leadership is clear: You either with us or against us. Reports surfaced late last week that Debra Bartoshevich, a Wisconsin Delegate supporting Hillary Clinton, had told the Journal Sentinel that...

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton's defeat. She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama. And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead. But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention

Washington - As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton's defeat. She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama. And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead. But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer. “I’m sure people are going to be upset with me,” said Bartoshevich, a 41-year-old emergency room nurse from Waterford in Racine County, and convention delegate pledged...

Wisconsin Democrats, gathered in convention at Stevens Point Friday night, had no national party "stars" to gush about. Presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama, who was in the state Thursday, skipped the partisan gathering. So, too, did New York Senator Hillary Clinton, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Virginia Senator Jim Webb and all the other "names" mentioned as prospective vice presidential candidates. Nor did they have a keynote speaker to get all excited about. In the absence of a national celebrity, they had to settle for a "keynote" from Governor James Doyle -- who would have addressed the convention anyway....

Wisconsin has been agonizingly close in recent Presidential elections and current polling data suggests it’s likely to be a very competitive state again in November 2008. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Wisconsin shows Barack Obama earning 45% of the vote while John McCain attracts support from 43%. This is the third time in four Rasmussen Reports polls that the candidates have been within two percentage points of each other. All four polls have shown the gap between the candidates smaller than the margin of error (+/- 4.5 percentage points). In two of the four polls, Obama has held...

Washington - Madison Democrat Tammy Baldwin joined the only other openly gay member of Congress, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), on Wednesday to unveil a new House caucus focusing on gay rights. The group, called the LGBT Equality Caucus, has received the support of 50 other members of the House, most of them from California, New York and the Northeast. None of Wisconsin's seven other House members has joined the caucus. Baldwin said she hopes to use the caucus, formed to advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, to inform other lawmakers about issues important to those communities. "Corporate America...

On the heels of John McCain's Friday campaign stop in Wisconsin, a new SurveyUSA poll suggests the presumptive Republican nominee for president has ground to make up in his race with Democrat Barack Obama. And if Obama adds former North Carolina Senator John Edwards to his ticket, the Democrats move into a wide lead over any Republican ticket. Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, appears to add so much political muscle that an Obama-Edwards ticket could ease Wisconsin out of "Battleground-State" status and over to the "Solid-Blue Democrat" column. The poll, conducted in mid-May for television stations in Minneapolis...

Greendale, WI - With some jabs to the left at his likely fall opponent and some steps clearly down the middle, Republican John McCain continued his push Thursday to win over Wisconsin voters. In April, McCain's platform was two roundtable discussions with business leaders. This time, it was a town hall meeting in a packed high school gymnasium, followed by a reception with big-ticket donors at a downtown hotel. Both visits came after McCain locked up the Republican nomination, and as Democrats Barack Obama - McCain's main target Thursday - and Hillary Rodham Clinton continue their battle. McCain was to...

Washington - If you ranked all of the TV markets in "blue-state" America according to how much advertising they saw from the 2004 Bush campaign and its allies, the list would begin like this: Milwaukee. Green Bay. Wausau. Pittsburgh, Pa. Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pa. Madison. La Crosse-Eau Claire. That pretty much says it all about Wisconsin's place on the electoral map. Few blue states are fatter targets for Republicans.That was true for George W. Bush, who lost the state twice by an average of three-tenths of a percentage point. And it will be true again for John McCain, now busy crafting...

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Wisconsin shows John McCain holding identical leads over both potential democratic candidates. McCain tops both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by a 47% to 43% margin. In late March, McCain and Obama were in a toss-up Clinton trailed the GOP hopeful by eleven points. McCain enjoys double-digit leads over both candidates among men, but trails both candidates among women in the Badger State. The GOP candidate also leads both candidates by double-digits among voters not affiliated with either major political party. Nationally, while the fundamentals of Election 2008 favor the Democrats, McCain remains...

An election that likely will shift the leaning of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from liberal to conservative was derided Wednesday as a tragedy and a sign of how far special interest groups will go to gain control of the court. Michael Gableman's victory Tuesday over Justice Louis Butler was the second in two years for conservatives who have criticized the court as antibusiness and activist. "The combination of the money, the tenor, the disrespect for facts and the racially charged nature of the campaign makes it one of the true low points around the country for judicial elections," said James...

MADISON, Wis. -- Michael Gableman had 51 percent of Tuesday's vote compared with 49 percent for Butler with 93 percent of precincts reporting. Butler is the first incumbent justice to lose a re-election bid since 1967. He joined the court in 2004 after being appointed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. He built his campaign around the charge that Butler was a judicial activist. Gableman claims to be a judicial conservative. While the race was officially nonpartisan, Democrats including Gov. Jim Doyle and liberal special interest groups campaigned heavily for Butler while Republicans and conservative outside groups worked for Gableman. The...

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Wisconsin voters found John McCain and Barack Obama in a toss-up—it’s McCain 48% and Obama 46%. At the same time, McCain leads Hillary Clinton 50% to 39% in the Badger State. Those numbers have changed little since a month ago, McCain leads both potential Democratic candidates nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Both Clinton and Obama lead McCain among women in Wisconsin while McCain leads both among men. Overall, McCain is viewed favorably by 61% and unfavorably by 37%. Obama’s ratings are 54% favorable, 45% unfavorable. Clinton earns positive reviews...

(Supreme Court attack ads not expected to raise participation) Madison, WI - Those nonstop TV and radio ads praising and condemning candidates in Tuesday's Supreme Court election cost millions of dollars, but they likely won't dramatically raise voter turnout. Kevin J. Kennedy, director of the state Government Accountability Board, says 20% of eligible voters turned out in the spring election in 2007 - the first time the campaigns of both Supreme Court candidates were drowned out by ads from third-party groups. He doesn't expect the turnout Tuesday to be much different. He predicted that about 875,000 votes will be cast...

Through passive listening posts operated within central Wisconsin The US Mat makes the following projection where there are no local contests in the April 1st Wisconsin election    It will be a lightly attended Wisconsin non partisan -/ party primary election held on April Fools Day Tuesday April 1st. when Madison area resident Supreme Court Justice  Louis Butler will whip opponent Burnett county Circut court Appeals judge Michael Gableman for a 10 year term on the Supreme Court by a whopping 14 points.   The low turnout was because the average Wisconsin voter was engulfed in snow and dashed dreams of Wisconsin winding up...

When Wisconsin voters go to the polls this April Fool's day, the state Supreme Court may realize the joke's on them. After four years of judicial activism, one of the court's most liberal members, Justice Louis Butler, is up for re-election -- and voters get to send a message about what they expect from their judges.

Obama changed my mind about McCain renewamerica.us, DC - On Tuesday night, Feb. 19, 2008, Barack Obama let the cat out of the bag for the first time, when he gave a 45 minute, off the cuff speech after his victory in Wisconsin. For the first time in his campaign, he talked to some extent on substance, rather than in just empty platitudes and feel good rhetoric. For the first time he talked of more than just "hope for change" and "change for hope" and leave the rest to the fantasies of his supporters' imaginations. What he was proposing was...

Barack Obama and John McCain are essentially tied in the contest to win Wisconsin’s ten Electoral College votes in November. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds Obama attracting 44% of the vote while McCain picks up 43%. Eight percent (8%) say they would vote for some other candidate while 4% are not sure. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, McCain has a twelve point lead, 50% to 38%.

Allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Barack Obama’s landslide victory in Wisconsin. The race is over. Hillary Clinton is over. Her electability is over. Bill Clinton’s political invincibility is over. The Clinton Restoration is over. It’s over. Obama got to the far left faster than Hillary did. He out-organized her, out-fundraised her, out-speechified her, out-hustled her, out-dressed her, and out-presidentialed her. He outbid Hillary for votes, one promised government check at a time. His 17-point margin of victory in Wisconsin was incredible. It says he can’t be stopped. Outside of the whacko ultra-left Madison college population, which...

Clinton's New Tactic: Prove Only She Can Beat The GOP NEW YORK (CBS) ― It's push the panic button time for Hillary Clinton. After 10 losses since Super Tuesday she faces a must-win situation in Ohio and Texas on March 4. She began her day among friends here in New York. Wrapped in the hugs and kisses of her friends, Clinton began the fight to keep her presidential hopes alive. "This campaign goes on," she said. "This campaign moves forward. "It's is time to get real, to get real about how we actually win this election and get real...

Allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Barack Obama's landslide victory in Wisconsin: The race is over. Hillary Clinton is over. Her electability is over. Bill Clinton's political invincibility is over. The Clinton Restoration is over. It's over. Obama got to the far left faster than Hillary did. He out-organized her, out-fundraised her, out-speechified her, out-hustled her, out-dressed her and out-presidentialed her. He outbid Hillary for votes, one promised government check at a time. His 17-point margin of victory in Wisconsin was incredible. It says he can't be stopped. Outside of the wacko ultra-left Madison college population, which...

Barack Obama's victory in Wisconsin on Tuesday was just the latest sign that Hillary Clinton's desperate, anti-democratic moves to salvage her bid for the Democratic nomination are destroying her last chances to win a fair fight. Loudly and publicly, the Clintons proclaim that superdelegates should feel free to ignore the wishes of the folks back home and jam Hillary's nomination through at the convention. They openly predict that they'll demand the seating of the Michigan and Florida delegations, totally contravening the party's rules. Do they think the voters aren't listening to these authoritarian pronouncements, reminiscent of the days before the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton's defeat in this week's Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary wasn't just any old loss. Exit polls of voters show it was a serious collapse that saw Barack Obama erode - if not capture - much of the heart of her support. As the two rivals turn their attention to crucial showdowns in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, here is a look at what Wisconsin portends for the road ahead. Q: How bad was Wisconsin for Clinton? A: Very. Of the types of voters who usually support her, only older people - especially whites over age 65...

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee vowed Tuesday to continue his campaign for the White House despite another loss to presumptive nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain in the Wisconsin GOP primary. "It's not about ego," Huckabee told reporters at the Peabody Hotel after he telephoned McCain to congratulate him on winning the Wisconsin primary. "Let me assure you that my ego doesn't enjoy these kind of evenings where we don't win the primary election," he said, adding there are several issues, such as pro-life and taxes, he wants to continue to speak out on and hopes to do so at the...

Clinton's Spin Machine: Spun Dry Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 By MICHAEL GRUNWALD Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the ninth and tenth straight time last night, with blowouts in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Needless to say, this means nothing. As Clinton strategist Mark Penn explained yesterday, Wisconsin has a lot of independent voters, so it doesn't really matter. And Hawaii is practically Obama's home state, so it obviously doesn't matter. Anyway, as Penn said recently, "winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election." It's apparently not even a sign of who can...

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton must win 57 percent of the remaining primary and caucus delegates to erase Barack Obama's lead, a daunting task requiring landslide-sized victories by a struggling presidential candidate. Obama's victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday — his ninth and 10th in a row — left him with 1,178 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses in The Associated Press' count. Clinton has 1,024. Another 1,025 remain to be awarded, most of them in contests in 14 states, Guam and Puerto Rico. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination. Further complicating Clinton's challenge, Obama...

Wisconsin Exit Polling Data- 74% of Republicans Pro-Life on Abortion RSS Newsfeed by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor February 20, 2008 Madison, WI (LifeNews.com) -- Exit polling data from the Tuesday primary in Wisconsin shows the Badger State is like most others in that a strong majority of Republican voters take a pro-life stance on abortion. With Wisconsin in the mix, the number of states with a pro-life Republican majority jumps to 17 out of 22 that have voted thus far. The exit polls found 74 percent of Republican voters in Wisconsin say they are pro-life while just 25 percent say...

Obama wins include very trouble signs for Clinton... Barack Obama continued his winning streak last night, winning the Wisconsin primary by over 15 points and destroying Hillary Clinton in the Hawaii caucus. Wisconsin was a state that Clinton really has no excuse for losing. Demographically, it was perfect for a Clinton win -- lots of seniors, lots of low income voters, lots of union households, very few African Americans -- and for her to not only lose but get crushed in a state so favorable to her may be a sign that her campaign is now crumbling.

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the geniuses who are running their campaign have done all they possibly could to lose in Wisconsin and their efforts have been rewarded! They publicly speculated that they would override the will of the voters and line up super delegate/bosses to vote for them regardless of how their districts and states voted. They spoke about using delegate credentials challenges over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations to overturn the will of the primaries. Bill Clinton’s volatile temper was on full display pitting the former president in a shouting match against a heckler. There has never...

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Barack Obama has surged past Hillary Clinton to open a big national lead in the Democratic presidential race, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday. Obama also leads Republican front-runner John McCain in a potential November election match-up while Clinton trails McCain, enhancing Obama's argument he is the Democrat with the best shot at capturing the White House. Among Republicans, McCain has a substantial national lead over his last major challenger, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, as he takes his final steps toward clinching the nomination.

It was only a few months ago that American was laughing at Hillary Clinton’s absurd sense of inevitability. Remember the “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which Hillary (as played by Amy Poehler) smugly cracked that Democrats would support their nominee “no matter who she may be”? It’s been a few weeks since that inevitability collapsed--the South Carolina blowout was probably the tipping point. But it was only last night that Hillary finally acquired the odor of a loser. Broadly speaking, Wisconsin should have been her turf. The state is an overwhelmingly white, working class bastion. (OK, a moment’s pause for...

2/20/08 3:17 AM Heilemann: Clinton to Bring the Hammer Down After Her Wisconsin Drubbing . . . The final array of implications involves the tenor of the campaign that Clinton will wage between now and the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4. Over the past few days, her operation has begun to sharpen the “contrasts” between HRC and BHO. Rightly or wrongly, her people simply do not believe they can do much now to change her fundamental message on the positive side: that she’s readier than Obama to assume the presidency on day one; that she’s a fighter for...

Some thoughts on where things stand after last night: 1. The House of Clinton is falling before our eyes. Hillary Clinton’s crushing loss yesterday in Wisconsin, in the wake of the wipeout she experienced in the “Potomac Primaries” and the loss of ten consecutive states, means it is extremely improbable that she will win the nomination. Everything is breaking Obama’s way. All the trends are going in his direction and he is getting stronger with every passing week. Hillary Clinton has shown no signs that she can slow, let alone stop, his momentum. She not only has to defeat him...

Allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Barack Obama’s landslide victory in Wisconsin. The race is over. Hillary Clinton is over. Her electability is over. Bill Clinton’s political invincibility is over. The Clinton Restoration is over. It’s over. Obama got to the far left faster than Hillary did. He out-organized her, out-fundraised her, out-speechified her, out-hustled her, out-dressed her, and out-presidentialed her. He outbid Hillary for votes, one promised government check at a time. His 17-point margin of victory in Wisconsin was incredible. It says he can’t be stopped. Outside of the whacko ultra-left Madison college population, which...

Arizona Senator John McCain wins handily in Wisconsin while showing stronger support among the Republican Party’s base. Self-identified Republicans made up more than 7 of 10 voters, and they went for McCain by 22 points - 58 percent to 36 percent for Huckabee. Conservatives also went for McCain by 4 percentage points, and among those voters who consider themselves somewhat conservative McCain wins 55 percent to Huckabee’s 38 percent. McCain even wins among frequent conservative talk radio listeners. These voters make up 28 percent of primary participants, and they went for McCain over Huckabee by 20 points. Again today, the...

ABC News' Ron Claiborne and Teddy Davis Report: Arizona Sen. John McCain unveiled a new line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., following his Tuesday win in Wisconsin's Republican primary. "I will work hard to make sure Americans aren't deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change," said McCain.

Fox News calls Wisconsin for Obama. Obama beats Hillary.

CNN

McCain wins Wisconsin per all news outlets. He is giving a great speech now.

A Wisconsin appeals court upheld a circuit court judge's decision that favored a farmer in a landmark test of the state's right-to-farm law. The appeals court's decision led to Gov. Jim Doyle's staff annoucing the state no longer would participate in the case. That would seem to be the end of the story for some Sawyer County property owners' lawsuit against William Zawistowski. But it isn't. The lawsuit and the issue are far from being resolved. The lawsuit's 14 plaintiffs, most of whom live outside of Wisconsin, said Mr. Zawistowski's cranberry farm created a nuisance by discharging the farm's phosphorus...

Waiting on hope, I stood outside for two hours in Wisconsin snow with frozen feet. I listened to people's intimate conversations because we were that close. I felt pressed by white people around me, and I felt fine. I saw African-Americans from a distance without panic. I was one of thousands, and no fear gripped me, even as the thousands pressed forward. I let myself be carried, then I walked and walked up stairs, finally arriving at the tiptop. There was no place but the top for a woman who doesn't like heights. This night I was a woman waiting...