On April 1st, 2025, the residents of Milwaukee elected the socialist to our Common Council since 1948.
This was a special election to determine who would replace the late Jonathan Brostoff for the District 3 seat. It coincided with the largest-turnout State Supreme Court race.
While the opposition candidate Daniel Bauman had an experienced team of consultants working with him, we were running a scrappy but motivated campaign of a few staff and a total of 150 unique volunteers. Before canvassing shifts, you could often find the campaign staff poring over maps, strategizing which doors we should knock next.
District 3 is made up of 20 wards, each with their own demographics and concerns. From the nice houses near the lake to the more DIY Riverwest neighborhood, each has a vibe that longtime residents can characterize.
Let’s look at some maps to get a feel for how different parts of the district vote. Most of the data can be found on the official election website, and it was mapped using QGIS.
Registered Voters / Ballots Cast
Let’s first get a big-picture overview of the entire election and see how many registered voters actually cast ballots. I’ll also use this as a chance to set the stage, explaining in broad strokes what kinds of voters live where.
There were a total of 26,433 registered voters in the wards within District 3, and 17,231 ballots were cast. This means that about 65% of registered voters actually cast their ballots this election.
(We are only looking at registered voters who live in each ward. If you aren’t registered to vote, you don’t count!)
Wards 127, 128, and parts of 176 are what we would call “By the Lake” The closer you get to the water, the more expensive the houses and wealthier the residents. Residents here are involved and keen on keeping their neighborhood nice, and these wards make up some of the movers and shakers in the city. This includes the residence of the Hupy of Hupy and Abraham you see on personal injury billboards, or former Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele.
Wards 121, 122, 133, 134, and 332 are Riverwest, the politically-active alt-neighborly hipsterhood. Even if you ignore the political posts on the Riverwest Neighborhood facebook page, you can tell by the amount of yard signs. Both candidates lived here, and on the campaign this was considered “our base.” 133 contains one of the student dorm buildings, Riverview, which likely contributes to the lower voter turnout in this ward.
Ward 126 contains many of the on-campus residences. There are four tall towers filled with college students here, so it’s dense. For comparison, Ward 126 has approximately the same number of registered voters as ward 127 or ward 128, but the majority of the surface area of Ward 126 is taken up by non-residential campus buildings.
Wards 123-125 are roughly the “Upper East Side”. It’s a mix of student renters, general renters, and families (especially in 125). It’s quiet and there’s fewer businesses besides along the streets of Oakland and Locust.
Wards 129-132 can be considered the core “East side.” It’s similar to the upper east side except with more apartment buildings. There are definitely students down here, but as we get closer to Brady Street it starts to skew away from student rentals.
174-176 and 178-179 are the “Lower East Side” which has a lot more rentals, duplexes, and nightlife. These wards are the most populous, with 174 and 175 being the only two wards in this district to each have more than 2000 registered voters.
Daniel Bauman vs Alex Brower: General Election
Now we start to see the divide between common council candidates. The formula here is “Votes for Brower divided by Total Votes”. The write-ins are negligible, so this is essentially “percentage vote for Alex Brower” with red indicating more votes for our guy.
As mentioned before, Alex Brower and Daniel Bauman both had their residences in Riverwest. Alex lived just outside ward 121, while Daniel was in 122. You can see the effect this had on voters.
Wards 133, 134, and 332 consistently vote further left than other wards, being more open to socialism or more radical politics. In the 2016 Democratic primary, wards 133 and 134 (roughly 137 and 138 in 2016 wards) went roughly 5:1 in favor of Bernie Sanders vs Hillary Clinton. In contrast, Ward 122 voted 277-119 Clinton-Sanders. Anecdotally, there is a higher percentage of bartenders and service workers living here compared to other wards, and these professions tend to lean left, which favored Brower in this race.
Wards 127 and 128 contain the most wealthy voters and are what we considered Bauman’s base. The census tracts covering these wards have the highest median household incomes in the district, and Daniel Bauman’s endorsement by the mayor and messaging that he was the candidate who could work best with city hall was compelling to them. It didn’t help that Alex Brower is a proud socialist who makes it very clear that he wanted more radical change rather than upholding the status-quo.
These two wards voted more conservatively on the State Supreme Court ballot, with 29% and 18% of voters respectively casting their ballot for the conservative candidate. Of all wards pictured, these had the highest percentages of votes for Brad Schimel.
The student-heavy Ward 126 leaned very Brower, voting similar to our base in Riverwest. On election day, we focused on canvassing students who were walking from their dorms to the polls, and we got posters up in the buildings with our campaign points about student issues.
Since many students were primarily interested in the supreme court race and weren’t aware of local races, these efforts went a long way. We just needed to get our name in front of the students, tell them that he was the better candidate for their issues, hope they told their friends, and count on them recognizing Alex Brower’s name on the ballot.
The wards 123, 124, 129, and 130-132 are a mix of rentals and single-family homes, and in my experience trending towards young professional renters. 125 was considered “Bauman turf” during canvassing and had a good amount of families, feeling like a mix of students and “by the lake.”
Wards 174, 175, 179, and 178 had respondents who were frequently worried about safety since Brady Street has had some chaotic nights recently, and drunk people get loud when they come out of the bars and wander into the neighborhoods.
Common Council Voters / Supreme Court Voters
The April 1st election was no joke for politically-minded Wisconsinites. The Supreme Court race determined if the liberals or conservatives would have a majority on the court. It was world news, and important enough nationally that both sides spent a combined $100m dollars for their candidates.
As a Milwaukee resident, there were so many phone calls, texts, canvassers, and waste paper stuffed in my mailbox making sure we got out and voted for the state supreme court race. These efforts had a massive impact, becoming the largest-turnout WI state supreme court election. Some Milwaukee polling locations even ran out of ballots.
This map shows the percentage of State Supreme Court voters who also cast a ballot in the Common Council race. It could be broadly interpreted as showing who cares about the common council race or had knowledge of the candidates.
The breakdown is similar to the total voters map. Ward 126 is no surprise: Most students come from outside of the district and were unfamiliar with the city’s common council. This suggests voters would not fill in bubbles for races they didn’t understand.
When we were on campus, we ran into other volunteers trying to convince students to vote for Susan Crawford, but we never saw anyone canvassing for the common council race. It is a lot easier to drum up support against Elon and Trump than talk about local constituent services.
In Riverwest, there’s civic engagement and familiarity of the candidates, and the average person is more aware of the race. And most people would have been looking at yard signs for months. The campaign also focused the majority of our canvassing here, and we knocked every voter’s door more than three times.
Mapping and analyzing data like this can help inform campaign strategy going forward. But strategy is useless without thousands of volunteer hours – that’s what actually made this win possible. 151 volunteers knocked on 24,000+ doors, talked to about 17% of registered voters, and we proved that organized people can beat candidates with more money and city hall endorsements.
Next time, we will share some data specific to our campaign, such as how the primary results directed our strategy, where we focused our efforts, and what got volunteers to show up.
If you want to meet these people taking action in their community, join the Milwaukee DSA and get involved.
