TONIGHT at 9PM: 'Election Night LIVE at The Recombobulation Area'
Join our livestream here on Substack at 9 p.m. But first: Go vote, Wisconsin.
The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time 21-TIME! Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer.
It’s all come down to this, folks. Today is the day the voters will choose the nominee for the Democratic Party for Wisconsin’s 2026 gubernatorial election.
This year’s fall election could be the most consequential contest Wisconsin has seen in quite some time. It is the first open race for governor since 2010, and the Democrats’ first realistic opportunity at a trifecta — control of the state Senate, Assembly, and governorship — in a generation.
The Gerrymander has fallen. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is firmly in liberal control, a 5-2 majority following the landslide victory from Justice-elect Chris Taylor — who will have her investiture ceremony later this week — in April of this year. The opportunity is there for Democrats in Wisconsin to hold the governor’s office, flip the legislature, and finally start playing some offense and begin to transform this state for the better.
As always, it will be the voters who point the way forward. So, be sure to do your civic duty and GO VOTE.
Important Election Day reminder: Wisconsin has same-day voter registration.
So, if you haven’t registered or need to re-register, you can do so at your polling place (with ID and proof of residence) TODAY.
Every state should do this. It’s great that Wisconsin does this. If you have people in your life who are unsure if they can or should vote, remind them of this.
Election Night LIVE at The Recombobulation Area!
As results roll in this evening, we will be hosting an Election Night results livestream here at The Recombobulation Area.
This will begin at 9 p.m. and will feature data and analysis from John Johnson of Marquette University and reaction and conversation with Kate Duffy of Motherhood for Good (and potentially others, too).
Find the livestream here.
We recommend that you register to join so you’ll be automatically reminded when the livestream begins.
You can also find this available on the Substack app.
The nature of this livestream may evolve based on how the night unfolds. We don’t want to be presumptive about anything that might occur, so we’re just going to be sticking to the facts as we have them.
Polls will close at 8 p.m., we’ll be gathering information over the following hour, and then we will be going LIVE at 9 p.m.
We plan to host a top-of-the-hour update at 9 p.m. for at least 15 minutes.
Depending on the nature of the results, that could evolve into a broader discussion, or it could mean we need to take a break to go crunch the numbers and learn more about where things are headed, and return at 10 p.m. for a longer conversation.
You will be able to ask questions during the stream if you have a Substack account. Priority will be given to paid subscribers, of course.
But rest assured, we will be there covering these results live — and doing our very best to stay as recombobulated as possible, as we have throughout this especially discombobulating primary.
One thing we know we’ll be watching as it pertains to the results — traditional count vs. central count municipalities.
According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, there are 44 municipalities in Wisconsin that are currently authorized to use central count to process absentee ballots. That means these municipalities will be reporting the results from absentee ballots all at once.
The largest of these municipalities is, of course, Milwaukee. Before the 2024 election, I put together a 10-minute audio segment at Civic Media explaining how this works, as it has long been a source of misinformation and conspiracy theories regarding the election.
See that post here:
Or go right to the audio segment here.
As always, Milwaukee’s absentee ballot results could certainly become a major factor in this race if it looks to be an especially close race.
So, what does this central count business mean for understanding tonight’s results? It will mean that these 44 municipalities will be the ones to look to later in the night for results, while the more traditional count municipalities will be the ones to look to earlier in the evening.
If the past is any predictor of this, cities like Waukesha and La Crosse might be among the early results, but those can vary from election to election, so we won’t really know until we get there.
And while the results of the Democratic primary in the race for governor will undoubtedly be the headline of the evening, we will also be taking a look at results from congressional primaries and downballot races.
If you missed it, you can see our overview of those races here.
We hope you join us to recombobulate later this evening.
Now, once again: Go vote.
Dan Shafer is an independent journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He worked with Civic Media from 2024 to 2026. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.
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