The last point is the most important one. With the GOP race basically over, indies will be drawn disproportionately to the open Democratic primary (this is one reason why Obama will win Virginia by like 30 points - along with the black vote and the upscale liberals in NOVA - hillary's only saving grace is the high asian population in NOVA - an asian smear has been occuring under the radar against Obama - and the growing latino population in NOVA).

In all open contests going forward, look for obama to build on his independent support.

Seems to me that what really gives him some advantage is time. Seems that the more people get to know him the more they like him. So, if he can give each state enough time, he stands a good chance of winning people over.

I'd love to hear people start asking the candidates the tough questions about habeus corpus and torture. Obama's the only candidate I've heard come out strongly against the idea that torture is ever acceptable and to declare strongly that he will reinstate the rights of habeus corpus. Seems to me that the Democratic base would have strong feelings about these issues and they ought to hear clearly exactly where the candidates stand.

And don't forget we've got UW-Madison here, too.  If ever there was a place for Obama to clean up, it's Madison.

Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!

Just to clarify the questions about Latino voters: Iowa's Latino population is small, growing, and has a large cohort of non-citizen or non-voting naturalized people. Wisconsin has a more established and slightly larger Latino population. They should be more of a factor in Wisconsin, though probably not hugely. I'd look for 5 percent of the Democratic vote, to double that for black voters.

Come to think of it, Wisconsin is the only state where I'm related to a Latino voter. By marriage on my wife's side; his family has been in Milwaukee since his great-grandfather fled civil war in Mexico a century ago. And the Latino population in Milwaukee is substantial enough that the Brewers recently added a Mexican sausage to their fourth-inning sausage races, and they also wear jerseys that say "Cerveceros" once a season in honor of the local Latino population. For the Midwest, that's a pretty big Latino cultural impact!

Thanks. I'm still skeptical that easy comparisons can be drawn between Wisconsin and its pro-Obama neighbors to the South, South-West, and West. Iowa and Minnesota are caucus states. Much noise has been made to the point that, as Yglesias puts it, Obama has cracked the caucus code. Of course, Obama could have benefited from both regional taste and those two states being caucuses; it's by no means mutually exclusive. But it is still something to consider before making comparisons.

Obama is the Senator from Illinois.

As you point out,  Wisconsin's is an open primary. I'm wondering how the end of a competitive Republican contest affects Republican voting behavior. A lot of professional conservatives seem convinced that Clinton is much easier to beat than Obama. What are the chances that Republicans, with nothing else to do, take to the role of saboteur and vote Clinton in the open primaries to come? I'm guessing most rank and file GOPers aren't so strategic/cynical. But I have learned that one shouldn't underestimate the depravity of the GOP.

You're all forgetting that Obama did the Monday Night Football intro for the Bears. Look for the Packer fan vote to break for Hillary, who, a few days prior to the election, will declare herself a life long cheesehead.

Wisconsin's voting system is ridiculously open -- you don't even need ID if you can show up with someone who has a valid ID who will vouch that you live in that precinct.  

Lymon, do you mean to register or to vote?  Cause I don't think you need an ID to vote in most places -- just your signature on a form with your name on it.  Does WI let you vote without being registered beforehand?

lymon, Minnesota has a similar system: You can register to vote on election day with little more proof of identity than a utility bill or an already registered neighbor willing to vouch for you in writing.

And you know what? Minnesota has high turnouts and no fraud.

States like Virginia, where I live now, and Illinois, where I lived a decade ago, have all kinds of formal pre-registration and day-of identification requirements. And they also have low turnouts and a consistent occurrence of fraud.

Wisconsin has somewhat more of a culture of political corruption than Minnesota. I mean, Tommy Thompson, for example. But nothing that compares to Illinois or most of the American South. The point is that the degree of electoral corruption in a state is absolutely unrelated to the degree of voter regulation. Electoral corruption is a cultural phenomenon, not a regulatory lapse.

Seeing as I hail originally from Wisconsin and currently live in Minnesota, I feel like I have a pretty good pulse on this. Wisconsin is slightly less prosperous than Minnesota and there is, crudely put, more of a beer-drinking ethos to the place. This is balanced out, however, by a much higher population of African Americans, particularly in the Southeast cities of Milwaukee and Racine (my hometown) and upscale, educated bastions of liberalism like Madison. As we saw in Minneapolis, these predominantly white liberals in Madison will be turning out for Obama. And like Minneapolis, the under-thirty crowd In Madison (which is is huge, just huge) will be out in giant numbers to vote.

(Sidenote: here in Minnesota, the numbers of DFL caucus-goers broke records all over the place, rivaling the turnout in the famous election year of 68).  Much  of this will have to do with the fact that young people will be able to register the day of the election to vote.  I also think that Obama's campaign style plays better here in the upper Midwest.

I am a UW-Madison student and consider myself a centrirst Independent.  I was leaning towards voting for Romney because he seemed so competent, but now that he is pretty much out of the race, I plan on voting for Hillary.  While Obama has Governor Doyle's support, Hillary has the Lt. Gov, our congressswoman Tammy Baldwin and the prominent county executive Kathleen Falk.

The primary is very open.  You can register on the same day without photo ID, and they give you a ballot with all of the parties races on it.  You just fill out the side you want and turn it in.  That is how it works with our optical scan machines anyway.

We like to say that we are politically as we are geographically.  To the right of Minnesota and above Illinois.

I dialed into that Clinton conference call this afternoon and was left absolutely speechless by some

I said it going in, and I'll say it coming out: Wisconsin was actually reasonably favorable terrain