As of this moment in time, it looks like Wisconsin will be proceeding with their April 7 primary, sort of. The sort of is that a judge has extended the deadline for mail-in votes which — under the ruling — can be mailed in after April 7 as long as the ballots are received by April 13. It is unclear whether the various local election authorities will still be releasing the in-person vote totals on April 7 or if the results will be held until April 13. [UPDATE: This morning, the judge who granted the extension on mail-in ballots issued a revised order requiring the election results to be held until the afternoon of April 13. Effectively, that makes the party-run primary in Alaska — ballots due on April 10 with results to be released on April 11 — the next set of results that we will receive, unless an appellate court sets aside the current order which is always a possibility. UPDATE 2: On Monday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order staying the District Court’s ruling. Under this order, all absentee ballots must be postmarked by April 7 and received by April 13. Apparently, results can be released after the polls close, but that is not 100% clear. UPDATE 3: The state election authority in Wisconsin has directed local election officials that they should not release results until April 13 under the part of the court order that was not stayed. It is unclear how binding that is and some local officials may release results earlier than April 13.]
We are now officially down to two candidates. And that makes delegate math relatively simple barring the unlikely event of uncommitted getting delegates. Wisconsin has eight congressional districts with between five and eleven delegates each. At the state level, Wisconsin has ten party leader delegates and nineteen at-large delegates. Overall, Wisconsin has eighty-four delegates.
The Seventh District has five delegates. Whomever gets the most votes will win at least three delegates. To get a 4-1 split, the winner needs 70% of the qualified vote.
The First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Districts have six delegates each. To get a 4-2 split, the winner needs to get 58.34% of the vote. To get a 5-1 split, the winner needs to get 75% of the vote.
The Fourth District has nine delegates. To get two delegates, a candidate needs 16.67% of the qualified vote. A candidate with 25% of the vote will earn three delegates. To get four delegates, a candidate needs 38.89% of the qualified vote. A candidate will be assured of five delegates if they have 50% of the qualified vote. To get six delegates, a candidate needs 61.12% of the vote. A candidate with 75% of the vote will win seven delegates. Finally, it takes 83.34% of the vote to clinch eight delegates.
For the ten party leader delegates, the break is on the 5s. So 25.00001% is three delegates and 24.9999999% is two delegates.
The Second District is the largest district with eleven delegates. Any candidate that is viable will get at least two delegates. It takes 22.73% of the qualified vote to pick up a third delegate. A candidate with 31.82% will win a fourth delegate. To get five delegates, a candidate needs 40,91%. Whomever gets the majority of the vote will win at least six delegates. To get to seven delegates, a candidate must receive at least 59.1% of the vote. At 68.19%, a candidate will get an eighth delegate. Finally, a candidate will need 77.28% to win nine delegates.
Finally, all viable candidates will get at least three of the nineteen at-large delegates. It takes 18.43% of the qualified vote to get four delegates. It takes 23.69% to win five delegates. A candidate with 28.95% will earn six delegates. For seven delegates, a candidate needs 34.22%. A candidate will be assured of eight delegates with 38.48%. To get to nine delegates, a candidate must receive 44.74%. The candidate with the most votes will get ten delegates, a candidate earns eleven delegates at 55.27%. To get twelve delegates, a candidate must receive at least 61.53% It takes 65.79% to clinch a thirteenth delegates. A candidate gets their fourteenth delegate at 71.06%. In the unlikely event that any candidate exceeds 76.32%, they would win fifteen delegates. Finally, to get sixteen delegates, a candidate needs 81.58% of the vote (which puts them close to the 85% they would need to win all of the delegates).
Looking at the above, there are only four pools with odd delegates — the Second, Fourth, and Seventh Districts and the at-large state-wide delegates. So if the race is close (i.e. something like 52-48) across the board, the winning candidate would net four or fewer delegates as the remaining pools would be split down the middle. At a uniform 55-45 split (which is unlikely), the winning candidate would still only have a 45-39 delegate win. It really takes something close to 60-40 to get a decent net out of Wisconsin and even that only translates to a 52-32 split.
Obviously, there are a lot of questions that we will not be able to answer until after the primary, and key one is going to concern turnout. In 2016, turnout for the Democratic Primary was about 1,000,000 with Senator Sanders getting around 57% of the vote. Clearly, we will not get anywhere near 1,000,000 voting in person on April 7, but will we end up with total votes close to 1,000,000? In other words, will everyone who would have voted if there was not a health scare cast a mail-in ballot. The answer to that question will probably not matter significantly to the results in the primary, but it may matter to who wins in November. Hopefully, when all the votes are finally counted, we will have a respectable turnout with most of it being mail-in ballots.
