Polls Showed Hong Leading, Then She Lost

By Buck Buckhorn · August 12, 2026

Opinion

Every single poll had Francesca Hong ahead. Not by a hair. By a landslide. The State Navigate survey put her at 44 percent. Marquette had her at 38, a 12-point jump in one week. The Crowley campaign’s own internal poll showed Hong at 35. The Barnes campaign’s internal showed her at 39. Even the Roys campaign’s poll, the most generous to its own candidate, still had Hong at 29. Her lead was so dominant that her opponents’ internal polling couldn’t manufacture a number where she wasn’t winning.

Then the votes got counted on August 11, and Hong lost. David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive who dropped out of the race and then crawled back in with Gov. Tony Evers’ blessing, won. Funny how that works.

Francesca Hong, Democratic primary candidate for Wisconsin Governor.

Ask yourself who benefits when every poll in a race points one direction and the result goes the other. The establishment Democrats in Wisconsin looked at a democratic socialist cruising to the nomination and hit the panic button. Evers, the popular incumbent governor, threw his endorsement to Crowley. The party apparatus closed ranks. And somehow, despite 56 percent of voters telling Marquette that Evers’ endorsement wouldn’t change their vote, the machine found a way.

Here’s what I find interesting. The Republican Governors Association dumped more than $2 million, maybe $3 million, into ads that looked like they were boosting Hong. Crowley and Barnes both screamed about it. Republicans meddling in a Democratic primary to prop up the candidate they think they can beat in November. That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s what happened, out in the open, and both campaigns said so on the record. The GOP wanted Hong because Tom Tiffany beats her head-to-head. Barnes was the only Democrat who polled ahead of Tiffany. So the Republicans spent millions to help pick their opponent.

David Crowley, Milwaukee County Executive and Democratic nominee.

And the pollsters? They nailed Hong’s number. She landed right in the 35-to-44 range everyone predicted. What they missed was Crowley’s hidden support. The undecideds broke hard for the establishment pick. The Marquette poll had 34 percent of voters still undecided late in the race, and the largest share of those were voters over 60. Those are the people who actually show up. Those are the people the party machine can turn out. Hong’s coalition was young voters, very liberal voters, people who told pollsters they had no second choice. Loyal, passionate, and apparently not enough.

Crowley’s re-entry was supposed to scramble the race. Instead it siphoned support from Barnes, not Hong. Thirty-four percent of Crowley-leaning voters picked Barnes as their second choice. The establishment split the anti-Hong vote between two candidates instead of consolidating behind one, and Hong still lost. That tells you the problem wasn’t vote-splitting. The problem was turnout. The problem was that the people who run the Democratic Party in Wisconsin decided who their nominee was going to be, and the polls were just a story they told the rest of us while they worked the phones.

Tony Evers, incumbent Governor of Wisconsin who endorsed Crowley.

Hong ran on universal childcare, cheaper healthcare, fully funded public schools. She called Tiffany an election denier and an Epstein pedophile protector. She ran like someone who actually wanted to change things. That’s exactly why the party couldn’t let her win.

The next time a poll shows an outsider crushing the establishment’s handpicked candidate, remember Wisconsin. The numbers said Hong was ahead by 20-plus points. The party said otherwise. The party won. It always does.

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