Voters line up to vote yesterday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This was unfortunate:

x 15% of Sanders supporters "did not know who they voted for" or voted for Bradley. 4% of Clinton voters did that. About to make a call. — Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) April 6, 2016

Bernie Sanders got 567,936 votes last night in Wisconsin. Fifteen percent of that is 85,190—people who either don’t know who they voted for (if at all) or voted for Republican Rebecca Bradley. Democratic state Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg lost to Bradley by 91,247 votes.

I’m not going to argue that Sanders supporters cost Kloppenburg that race. If the exit poll was right, it still wouldn’t be enough to change the results of that judicial race. And even assuming a margin of error, I don’t see math that would’ve flipped that contest, unless that exit poll was way off.

We lost that race because more Republicans turned out to vote for their crazy still-in-play primary than Democrats in a contest that remains, despite all the Sturm und Drang, a foregone conclusion. Hillary Clinton isn’t bringing out huge crowds, and quite frankly, neither is Sanders. The GOP still had more voters vote in their primary than Democrats in theirs (something, which must be reiterated, that is quite irrelevant in the general election). Furthermore, that judicial race was nominally “non-partisan,” so unless you knew what to look for on the ballot, it was hard to tell that the race had partisan implications. And, conservatives outspent liberals 4-1 on that state Supreme Court race.

So there are lots of reasons why we lost that race that have nothing to do with Sanders’ supporters. Still, it is imperative that the Sanders movement figure out how to engage its supporters on the full ballot, particularly since it relies so heavily on independent politically alienated voters (around 20 percent of Sanders’ Wisconsin voters—easily his margin of victory since Hillary Clinton and Sanders split Democrats 50-50). The Occupy movement became mostly irrelevant because of its refusal to engage in electoral politics (compared to the tea party). To its credit, the Sanders movement is engaged electorally, but seemingly focused on a single personality.

Sanders has undoubtedly activated a core group of people, one that could have incredible influence in our politics moving forward. But that will require broadening their portfolio of candidates so that their impact is felt up and down and in every corner of every ballot. Could you imagine Sanders supporters exerting the same level of fear into the hearts of Democratic incumbents as the tea party does to Republicans? That would be something we would all cheer.