Welcome to The Data Dive, your subscriber-exclusive newsletter on the most consequential elections of the midterms. Each Tuesday morning, I’ll focus on the numbers, trends and data shaping the biggest stories heading into Election Day. I’ll also dig into the 2026 battlegrounds that will determine control of Congress — one district, one county, one city and maybe even one precinct at a time. Today’s edition focuses on the Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin, where the democratic socialist candidate appears to have momentum. Let’s dive in.

National Democrats will be watching Wisconsin with apprehension tonight.

Democratic socialist State Rep. Francesca Hong is ascendant in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. But her party’s establishment has dire predictions for November if she wins. They fear her ideology and her history of inflammatory pronouncements make her a weaker general election candidate, and a poor showing could hand the governor’s mansion to Republicans in a crucial presidential battleground.

But only in recent weeks did mainstream Democrats in Wisconsin truly mobilize to blunt her rise — an effort that took on new urgency after Abdul El-Sayed, the former public health official who campaigned as an unabashed progressive, won out in neighboring Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary last week.

Hong has been propelled by the same left-wing, anti-establishment energy that catapulted El-Sayed, who did best with younger, higher-educated voters. If his win is any indicator for where Hong can expect bastions of support, I’ll be looking for big numbers for her in Dane County, the home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and likely the top vote-producing county today. And that energy will likely boost her around midsize cities like La Crosse, Portage, Platteville and Eau Claire, which also have sizable college communities and younger median ages.

(Nam Y. Huh / AP)

Hong has also been helped by a large and dysfunctional field of rivals, all of them with some claim to the establishment lane. Three candidates — Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former state official Missy Hughes — all dropped out in the weeks leading up to the primary. A fourth candidate, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, also dropped out for a little over a week, only to re-enter the race in late July.

Subscribe to keep reading The Data Dive, including Steve Kornacki’s analysis of why thousands of votes cast before the field narrowed could help decide tonight’s Wisconsin primary.