2010 Wisconsin Senate - Feingold vs. Johnson

11/2/10 -- The polling here has been stable to an uncanny degree.  Unless something is grossly off, Feingold's senate career is over.

10/8/10 -- Feingold's numbers haven't moved at all in almost a year -- indeed the consistency is almost eerie.  To win, he has to make up a point almost every other day, which is going to be very hard for a well-known incumbent to do.

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For most of its history, the political tradition in Wisconsin was neither Republican nor Democrat: It was Progressive.  Robert LaFollette and his sons dominated the state's politics.  There was no Democratic Party to speak of, so the only question was whether the state would elect a progressive Republican or a Progressive.  As the Democratic Party blossomed in the state during the 1940s and 50s, that Progressive impulse became housed in the Democratic Party.

Today, Russ Feingold is the embodiment of that tradition.  He's a maverick liberal, with a penchant for good government programs and a dislike of money in politics.

But Wisconsin is no longer the bastion of Progressivism it once was; during the 1980s and 1990s it actually was a test case for all manner of conservative initiatives, most prominently welfare reform.  Feingold is being challenged by conservative manufacturer Ron Johnson.  Feingold's numbers have started out in the low forties, which is a horrendous place for an incumbent to be.