[Faraday]

Some reasons why this happened:
1. Scott Walker ran a terrific campaign. He became identified as the "reform" candidate. The recall committee endorsed him.
2. Jim Ryan ran a terrible campaign. Though a liberal in a liberal county (61% for Gore in 2000), Ryan took open positions on very unpopular issues (for light rail, for domestic partner benefits, for the Hoan bridge bicycle path), etc. He must have been hoping for a very low turnout with liberal activists being all that would be necessary. Final vote total will be ca. 190 - 200 thousand (up from 134K in the primary). Big mistake.
3. The Norquist saga last week reminded everyone what kind of leadership the DemonRats have provided. Lots of normally Dem voters are just fed up.

[Cincincinati Spiritus]

Scott Walker also has a clean past. It is very difficult to taint a record as good as Walker's. Our Milwaukee Democrats are not clever enough to do it.

[steveegg]

To expand on point 2 (the horrid Ryan campaign), he never really adopted a message, even though his one-time campaign managers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, offered several to him. This forced the Journtinel, which has been unusually politically-savvy the last few months, to rethink its strategy of propping up the Ryan campaign at all costs. When Ryan finally adopted a campaign strategy, going negative, dropping obvious lies and sticking to those lies in the face of the light of truth was the single-most-wrong strategy he could have adopted. By the time yesterday rolled around, the Journtinel had done to him what the unions did to Nardelli 4 weeks ago; all-but-abandoned him.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Lots of normally Dem voters are just fed up.

And as Jeff Wagner pointed out on the radio a little while ago, Milwaukee County sent out reassessment notices that landed in property owners' mailboxes over the weekend. Really bad timing for the tax and spend crowd! Very good timing for Scott Walker.

Need I mention that everyone's property assessments were sharply UP!