Voter Data Was Missing From 5 Milwaukee USB Sticks — Then WI's Election Night Got Even Weirder

The Democrat Party's socialist surge hit a major snag last night in Wisconsin, as the racist (and anti-Thanksgivin g) state Rep. Francesca Hong lost the Democratic Governor primary despite polls that for months showed her to be the runaway winner. Stick a pin in that, we'll revisit the polls in a moment.

Hong had seemingly been cruising her weird way to victory, but, as RedState's Sister Toldjah reports, establishment Democrats had other ideas.

It looks like establishment Dems will get their wish, with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley projected by Decision Desk HQ as the winner over Hong, who maintained a commanding presence in polling throughout her campaign but was unable to bring it home for her campaign.

The final numbers aren't in yet, but it looks like Crowley eked out a 39.8 percent to 39.4 percent win over Hong.

Hong losing despite all the polling that showed her the runaway favorite was one of the bigger stories of the night, but there was also the curious case of five USB sticks from Milwaukee that were found to be missing important voting data and delayed final results from being tallied.

Here's what happened, according to the X thread of Wisconsin election observer Alexander Shur:

Five of the USB sticks were missing results from the election.
Election officials have to go back to the absentee facility to get the results again.
But election officials extracted “results” from some tabulators in 10 minutes and others in three. Election officials tell me it should take longer than three mins for results to download.
Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutierrez confirmed to me that officials just clicked the wrong button on five of the tabulators. That’s why it went so quickly.
They downloaded audit logs but not results

Even NBC News' election guru Steve Kornacki couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Steve Kornacki is slowly losing his mind https://t.co/84sA7npIg4 pic.twitter.com/7J2xXbuksN
— Jessy Han (@hjessy_) August 12, 2026

The obvious question here is: How did five out of nine of the USB sticks leave the election facility without the correct results and files? Here's a second question: maybe we should just use paper ballots? Digital technology doesn't seem to be doing our election system any favors.

And the other big question folks are scrambling to answer is how did pollsters get this race so spectacularly wrong?

A Marquette poll from late July showed Hong with a 31-point lead over Crowley. Thirty-one points! An insurmountable lead, you could say. The founder of State Navigate, whose July poll showed a 30-point Hong lead, confidently stated, "She's gonna win this primary."

To their credit, however, State Navigate took a second look at Hong's massive lead after Abdul El-Sayed, despite winning the Michigan Democrat Senate primary, massively underperformed the polling that showed him with a huge lead. That "stress test" by State Navigate yielded this "worst case scenario" for Hong: a 17-point win over Crowley

Ouch.

So what is going on here? Are pollsters showing a bias toward socialist candidates, or are socialist voters simply far more interested in answering polls than they are at schlepping themselves out to the polls on Election Day?

It could well be the latter. State Navigate raised that possibility after watching Abdul El-Sayed's supposedly commanding polling advantage evaporate in Michigan. El-Sayed led the final Decision Desk HQ polling average by 13 points, only to win the primary by roughly one point — a miss of about 12 points.

Then came Wisconsin. State Navigate had Hong ahead by 29 points in late July, while Marquette showed her beating Crowley 38 percent to 7 percent. Yet actual voters produced essentially a dead heat and a Crowley victory.

Whatever the explanation, two races in two states have now delivered the same warning: socialist enthusiasm in polling is not necessarily the same thing as socialist might at the ballot box.

And if Democrats are using these polls to convince themselves that the party's socialist surge is bigger than it really is, well, Wisconsin just handed them one heck of a reality check.

Editor's Note: Do you enjoy RedState's conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.