By of the

The sudden, shocking addition of more than 14,000 votes to Waukesha County's April 5 election turnout puts that county's turnout rate more in line with the neighboring GOP strongholds of Ozaukee and Washington counties.

Before the big adjustment, Waukesha County's vote total was just under 111,000. That is equal to 37.4% of the county's voting-age population of 296,081 people in the 2010 census.

After the big adjustment, Waukesha's vote total was roughly 125,000 votes. That is equal to 42.2% of the county's voting-age population.

By comparison, Ozaukee County's turnout was 44.1% of voting-age adults Tuesday, and Washington County's turnout was 40.9%.

The county with the highest turnout rate in the state on Tuesday was Dane County, at 47.7%. The statewide turnout was roughly 34%.

Before the adjustment, Waukesha would have registered by far the biggest decrease in turnout of any county in the state between last fall's governor's race and this spring's court race - almost 26 points, from 63% to 37%. The statewide drop in turnout between those two elections was about 16 points.

After the adjustment, Waukesha's drop-off in turnout is still among the biggest - around 21 points - but it is not nearly as much of an outlier. Ozaukee County had a slightly higher drop-off in turnout, almost 22 points. Washington County had a drop-off in turnout of a little more than 18 points. These turnout estimates are based on the voting-age population in each county in the 2010 census, and the total votes cast for governor in 2010 and for state Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Without the adjustment, Waukesha would have ranked 12th among 72 counties in turnout rate Tuesday.

With the addition of the 14,000 votes, it ranks fifth, after Dane, Bayfield, Ozaukee and Door, and just ahead of Washington.

In last fall's gubernatorial election, Waukesha had the second highest turnout rate of any county, and typically has among the highest turnout rates in the state.

Even with the addition of the 14,000 votes, Waukesha still shows one of the biggest declines in turnout rate between last fall's gubernatorial election and Tuesday's spring judicial election.

In fact, several of the counties with the biggest drop-off are heavily Republican, and voted at extremely high rates in last fall's midterm election. That reflected the much-discussed enthusiasm gap that favored the GOP in 2010. The pattern did not repeat itself in Tuesday's nonpartisan spring election. Instead, it was heavily Democratic Dane County that was the state's turnout leader. While Waukesha's turnout rate was 6 points higher than Dane's last fall, Dane's was between 5 and 6 points higher than Waukesha's on Tuesday (using the adjusted Waukesha vote total).

Political scientist John Coleman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said of the adjusted figures: "Obviously we will all have to hear the full explanation before reaching any conclusions, but given these facts, the adjustment on its face is not implausible."

Coleman said the previous turnout figure for Waukesha was more of an oddity because it would have meant a drop-off in turnout between the two elections that was much larger than any other county experienced.