Turnout higher than predicted for La Crosse County voters, who overwhelmingly went for Protasiewicz in Supreme Court race

Monday on La Crosse Talk PM, La Crosse County clerk Ginny Dankmeyer was hesitant to estimate what voter turnout might be like in Tuesday’s primary elections.

“I used to be pretty good at predicting turnout and the political climate lately, it just makes it very challenging to predict what type of turnout we have,” Dankemeyer said.

Eventually Dankmeyer did say she expected about an 18-20 percent turnout. She was wrong.

According to the unofficial summary, turnout of registered voters was 24.25 percent. There were 72,491 registered voters and 17,581 cast ballots.

There were three important races on the ballot depending on where one lived in the county.

The entire country is fixated on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where La Crosse County voters overwhelmingly voted for Janet Protasiewicz with 55.57 percent of the ballots — nine points higher than the rest of the state. Dan Kelly came in second (23.86%), Jennifer Dorow was third (12.61%) and Everett Mitchell fourth (7.91%).

Also on the ballot for La Crosse School District voters was a school board primary that cut the field from nine to eight (results here). There were 29,341 ballots cast in that race. The school board has four open seats to fill in the spring election cycle that ends April 4.

And in District 2 of La Crosse, 375 people voted in a city council primary cutting from three candidates to two (results here). The city council will have six seats on the spring ballot, but only three of them will be contested.