Wisconsin · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · margins and probabilities are for David Crowley
Who is running?
David Crowley (Democratic), Tom Tiffany (Republican). The margin below is David Crowley minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.
The race, in brief
Wisconsin elects a governor on November 3, 2026 in an open seat: Democratic governor Tony Evers, first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, declined to seek a third term. The text calls Wisconsin a purple state, with presidential races decided by less than a point in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and notes it is one of five Democratic-held governorships up in a state Donald Trump won in 2024. The state profile records a median household income of 75670.0 and a college share of 0.3.
The Democratic nominee is Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, with Sarah Godlewski as running mate. He withdrew on July 8, re-entered after Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez dropped out, and won the August 11 primary with 39.81% to Francesca Hong's 39.35%. The Republican nominee is U.S. representative Tom Tiffany, a House Freedom Caucus member endorsed by Donald Trump, who won his primary with 95.32%; his running mate is David Varnam. Tiffany had raised $10,842,318 by December 31, 2025; Crowley $1,039,328 by July 15, 2026.
The Cook Political Report (August 20, 2026), Fox News, Inside Elections and RealClearPolitics list the race as Tossup; Decision Desk HQ, Sabato's Crystal Ball and Silver Bulletin list it as D. Marquette University (September 16–23, 2026) had Crowley 49%, Tiffany 46% among likely voters; the aggregator average is Crowley +3.9%.
A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Incumbent Democratic governor Tony Evers declined to seek re-election to a third term.
Democratic Milwaukee County executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. representative Tom Tiffany are the nominees for their respective parties.
Democratic Milwaukee County executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. representative Tom Tiffany are the nominees for their respective parties.
*David Crowley, Milwaukee County Executive (2020–present) (previously withdrew, endorsed Rodriguez)
Tom Tiffany, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, was expected to obtain the nomination without meaningful challenge.
presidential races decided by less than a point in 2016, 2020, and 2024
Incumbent Democratic governor Tony Evers was first elected in 2018, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Scott Walker. He was re-elected by a slightly larger margin in 2022
candidate: David Crowley (Wisconsin politician) votes: 315,413 percentage: 39.81
The Cook Political Report Tossup August 20, 2026 Decision Desk HQ D September 23, 2026
|Tom Tiffany (R) $10,842,318 $7,854,693 $2,998,334
Marquette University September 16–23, 2026 692 (LV) ± 4.8% |49% 46%
Marquette University August 12–20, 2026 738 (LV) ± 4.5% |49% 44%
Platform Communications (R) August 12–13, 2026 500 (LV) ± 4.4% |48% 44%
Average |47.9% 44.0% 8.1% |Crowley +3.9%
Crowley narrowly won the Democratic nomination in an upset victory over Hong, as polls showed him trailing Hong by nearly 20 points just a week earlier.
Tiffany received an endorsement from Donald Trump, who Tiffany believes may have won the 2020 presidential election.
*Tony Evers, incumbent governor (2019–present) (endorsed Crowley)
Not in the source: No general-election fundraising after the primary; Tiffany's figures are from December 31, 2025 and Crowley's from July 15, 2026.; No vote shares for Evers's 2018 and 2022 wins or for the 2024 presidential result are given.; The general-election results table is empty (race not yet held).; The facts' forecast rows carry no basis, so it is not known whether the model used the state polls in the text.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as b903ae89832e; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+0.8 | D+0.6 | R+0.9 |
A shift of 0.1 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 32.8% | 34.0% | -1.2 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 79.2% | 66.3% | +12.9 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 6.0% | 10.1% | -4.1 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 7.8% | 12.9% | -5.1 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 2.9% | 4.4% | -1.5 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 5.1% | 9.6% | -4.5 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 40.1 | 39.1 | +1.02 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $75,670 | $77,633 | $-1,963 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $247,400 | $314,132 | $-66,732 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 67.9% | 67.4% | +0.5 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 3.3% | 4.8% | -1.5 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 1.4% | 3.0% | -1.6 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 11.6% | 12.3% | -0.6 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 10.8% | 11.1% | -0.3 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 32.4% | 32.1% | +0.3 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 2.0% | 2.6% | -0.6 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 1.9% | 2.9% | -0.9 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.44 | 0.47 | -0.02 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 3.4% | 4.0% | -0.6 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | +0.1 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.3 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | +0.1 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.2 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $67,755 | $70,662 | $-2,907 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 29.4% | 32.4% | -3.0 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 19.0% | 19.4% | -0.4 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 6.9% | 6.1% | +0.8 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 4.5% | 4.4% | +0.1 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 3.2% | 3.8% | -0.6 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.6% | 0.6% | -0.0 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.7% | 0.9% | -0.2 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.8% | 1.5% | -0.8 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.4% | 1.2% | -0.8 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.
How likely is each to win?
Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.
How wide is the range?
Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -7.8 and +12.0 points. Election day: -9.5 to +14.1. The election-day interval is 3.9 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.
What is the uncertainty made of?
Total sd 7.45 points, made of race-specific polling error 44%, drift to election day 29%, latent opinion 16%, correlated polling error 11%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
What evidence is this built on?
5 polls, most recent 2026-08-20. 20% verified against a primary source.
What changed since the last run?
Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is David Crowley ahead of Tom Tiffany. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -1.2 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.
Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls.
Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.
How has this model done before?
Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.
Where did every number come from?
Nowcast run 5ba4783c-e9ff-4579-939c-6b87cce462c4 and election-day run 9e27c8e0-3fcb-4af7-bfad-358d2ecbff7b, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.