Hong’s Stunning Wisconsin Loss Raises Election Integrity Questions After 20-Point Polling Lead Vanishes

By Trenton, Contributor
August 13, 2025 – 10:00 PM CST, Chicago, IL

Wisconsin Democrats may have an explanation for how Francesca Hong went from overwhelming gubernatorial frontrunner to losing one of the closest primaries in the country. But given the extraordinary sequence of events surrounding the election, voters are justified in demanding considerably more transparency about exactly what happened.

Hong didn't merely hold a small polling advantage that disappeared on Election Day. Surveys had portrayed her as the dominant candidate, including polling that showed her ahead by roughly 20 points or more. Yet Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley ultimately erased that enormous deficit and defeated her by only a few thousand votes.

The most remarkable part is that polling wasn't particularly wrong about Hong.

Marquette University's final survey put Hong at 38 percent. According to Marquette's post-election review, she ultimately received approximately 39.3 percent of the unofficial vote. In other words, the poll came remarkably close to predicting Hong's actual support.

It was Crowley's number that underwent an astonishing transformation.
Marquette measured Crowley at only 7 percent. He ultimately received approximately 39.8 percent, representing a roughly 33-point difference between his final polling number and his Election Day performance.

There is a plausible explanation for much of that movement. Marquette's survey had 34 percent of Democratic voters undecided, while another 16 percent supported Mandela Barnes, who withdrew shortly after the poll was completed. Those voters had to go somewhere.

But almost all of the consequential movement appears to have gone in one direction.

Hong barely moved from her polling number. Crowley exploded from single digits to nearly 40 percent.

That alone doesn't establish wrongdoing. It does, however, make this one of the most extraordinary late consolidations of the 2026 election cycle and provides a legitimate reason to examine carefully what happened during the closing days of the campaign.

There was also a powerful political incentive for establishment Democrats to stop Hong.

Hong is a democratic socialist, and Democratic officials increasingly worried that her politics and previous controversial statements could make her vulnerable against Republican Tom Tiffany in November. The prospect of Hong becoming the nominee placed establishment Democrats in the uncomfortable position of potentially watching a candidate they considered difficult to elect capture the nomination.

Then the establishment moved.

Outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers endorsed Crowley. Crowley appeared publicly with the governor, and establishment Democrats increasingly consolidated behind his candidacy as the primary approached.
Outside money followed.

More than $3 million in outside spending reportedly aided Crowley's remarkable comeback. Hong, meanwhile, entered the final stage of the contest without comparable resources to dominate television advertising or counter the attacks directed against her.

None of that constitutes election fraud. Political parties routinely attempt to defeat candidates their leadership believes cannot win a general election.
But it establishes something important about the circumstances surrounding this race: influential Democrats unquestionably had an incentive to defeat Hong, publicly supported her principal opponent and helped create the conditions for Crowley's late surge.

Then Election Night produced another controversy. The extremely close contest eventually depended heavily on results from Milwaukee, Crowley's political home base. Those results were delayed after election officials acknowledged a human error while processing election data.

Officials said the problem involved election staff pressing the wrong button during the process of downloading results from voting equipment. Five USB drives consequently did not contain the expected results, forcing officials to return to Milwaukee's central-count facility and download the information again.

That is precisely the kind of mistake election administrators should expect to face scrutiny over.

The Milwaukee Election Commission maintains that the error affected only the reporting process. Officials say the underlying results remained intact on the tabulators and that no ballots disappeared, changed or required retabulation.

There is currently no verified evidence contradicting that explanation.
But election integrity isn't merely about eventually producing an accurate number. It is also about maintaining procedures transparent and reliable enough that voters have confidence in how that number was produced.
Milwaukee's mistake therefore matters regardless of whether fraud occurred.

When a candidate trailing by roughly 20 points stages a historically dramatic comeback, the race comes down to only several thousand votes, and the largest city then experiences an acknowledged election-results processing failure during the count, officials should expect questions rather than dismiss them as inherently conspiratorial.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden went considerably further, publicly accusing Democrats of stealing the primary from Hong.

The evidence currently available does not establish Van Orden's allegation. No verified evidence has demonstrated that fraudulent ballots were counted for Crowley, legitimate Hong votes were discarded or election workers intentionally manipulated the result.

That distinction matters.

But so does the difference between saying there is no evidence of fraud and saying there is nothing unusual worth investigating.

There plainly was something unusual about Wisconsin.

Crowley went from 7 percent in Marquette's final survey to nearly 40 percent on Election Day. Hong's support barely changed. Establishment Democrats rallied behind Crowley, millions of dollars poured into his comeback, and the candidate establishment Democrats considered more electable ultimately defeated the socialist frontrunner by a razor-thin margin.

Then the election authority responsible for processing crucial Milwaukee results made an acknowledged mistake that delayed those results until early the following morning.

Each event has a plausible individual explanation. Taken together, however, they create exactly the kind of circumstances in which aggressive transparency should be welcomed rather than resisted.

Election officials should release detailed documentation explaining the USB-drive problem, the chain of custody surrounding the affected devices, when each device was handled, how officials verified the second downloads against the original tabulator records and what safeguards independently established that the mistake affected reporting rather than votes.

Doing so wouldn't prove fraud. It could do the opposite.

If the underlying records demonstrate exactly what Milwaukee officials say happened, releasing as much verifiable information as legally possible would provide tangible evidence supporting their explanation and allow voters to independently understand why the mistake did not alter the election.

That is a far stronger response to suspicion than simply asking the public to trust election administrators.

The Wisconsin primary therefore provides a broader lesson as Congress debates election-integrity legislation: public confidence depends on systems capable of demonstrating their accuracy when something goes wrong.

Hong's defeat may ultimately prove to be nothing more sinister than an extraordinary political collapse combined with an embarrassing administrative mistake. The evidence currently available supports that possibility far more strongly than it supports allegations of intentional fraud.

But an election in which a candidate's massive polling advantage disappears, establishment Democrats successfully consolidate behind her opponent and crucial results are delayed by an acknowledged processing error is precisely the kind of election where transparency matters most.

Americans shouldn't have to choose between blindly trusting election officials and automatically assuming an election was stolen.

They should be able to verify what happened. And Wisconsin officials now have an opportunity to demonstrate why Crowley's extraordinary victory was exactly what they say it was: the legitimate result of one of the most dramatic late swings of the 2026 election — rather than something voters simply have to take on faith.