Fox News Sinks GOP’s Chances of Winning Governor’s Race in Wisconsin

For the past two weeks, based on polls that showed her comfortably ahead, political gambling sites predicted that Francesca Hong was a lock to win the Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin. And it wasn’t just their users who bought into the hype but also the folks at Fox News. By Wednesday morning, when Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley was declared the winner of the race, all of them paid the price for betting on the wrong candidate.

While those who gambled their money away on the prediction markets, which listed Hong as a 95 percent favorite on Tuesday morning, “only” lost their wagers, her defeat was more painful for those in charge of the right-wing propaganda network and, by extension, the GOP.

They missed out on a much easier opportunity for Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) to win the state’s gubernatorial race in November.

And they only have themselves to blame.

When it looked as though Hong would win, Fox News covered the Democratic socialist incessantly. Not her platform of making life more affordable for Wisconsinites, of course, but rather past comments about wanting to cancel Thanksgiving, feeling uncomfortable in a restaurant with old white people, and abolishing the police.

Since that then drew attention to these remarks and got actual news outlets to also cover them, it stands to reason that this probably made the difference in an election that will end up being decided by a few thousand votes.

The big loser here is not only Hong but also Tiffany, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and an election denier who is wholly beholden to Donald Trump.

It’s not that she couldn’t have beaten the Republican, but her past statements would have made this more of an uphill battle.

And the suits in the executive suites of Fox News know this and are probably kicking themselves right now for not waiting to attack Hong until she had locked up the primary.

While the race reminds us that prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are really just gambling sites, they do generally reflect how people feel about races.

What they show us in this case is that, once it seemed as though Hong would prevail, Tiffany’s odds of winning the gubernatorial election in the fall more than doubled. In mid-July, right before Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez (D) abandoned her campaign, they stood at less than 30 percent. Without the Republican candidate doing anything, they rose to nearly 62 percent on the eve of the election.

Now that Crowley has locked up the Democratic nomination, they plunged right back down to below 25 percent.

Democrats are probably breathing a sigh of relief. While a political talent like Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s Senate candidate in Michigan, can win in a swing state, the less polished and unproven Hong probably would have had a tougher time.

And hanging on to the governorship in Wisconsin is crucial. Republicans have so heavily gerrymandered the state that they maintain control over both chambers of the legislature even when Democrats win statewide offices, and installing a MAGA zealot like Tiffany would likely result in a slew of legislation and regulations that would further the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.

As for Fox News, they’ll just have to focus on El-Sayed and the WNBA for the time being.