Class Size Confusion

This is kind of a funny little skirmish.

During the debate, Lohr said, “I now have classrooms of 30-32.”

  Grothman put out a news release along with a copy of Lohr’s schedule that says she has 29, 30, 28, 24 and 26 students in her five classes, an average of 27.4 students per class.

  “It is disappointing, but not surprising that Tanya Lohr has, one more time, been less than honest in her efforts to win the 20th Senate District,” the news release from Grothman said. “I hope that voters do not punish the West Bend School District based on Ms. Lohr’s comments. West Bend has a fine school district with reasonable class sizes and it is unfortunate that Ms. Lohr chose to exaggerate class sizes for her own selfish purposes.”

  Lohr said class sizes fluctuate throughout a semester, with students transferring in and out, and that what Grothman received from his open records request was “just a snapshot in a single day of what the class sizes are. I’ve had up to 32 students in my classes, as many teachers in our district have. This is just an attempt to move away from the true issue, which is what do we do about our increasing class sizes? Instead of attempting to address that issue, this is an attempt to get away from it.”

Lohr clearly exaggerated how many students she has in her classes and is now backtracking. It went from “I now have classrooms of 30-32” to “I’ve had up to 32 students in my classes.” And even with that, she offers no proof and the district’s own numbers contradict her story. She’s not the first politician to get caught exaggerating.

Battleground Wisconsin

I sure hope he’s right.

In Obama’s 2008 14-point Wisconsin win, exit polls showed a partisan ID split of +6 D: Dem 39%, GOP 33%, IND 29%. In the 2010 fall election, where Gov. Scott Walker was elected by 6 points, exit polls showed a partisan ID split of only +1 D: Dem 37%, GOP 36%, IND 27%. The June 5, 2012 Recall election then had a partisan split of +1 GOP: Dem 34%, GOP 35%, IND 31%.

One of the miscalculations of the Left’s recall efforts was what it would do to conservatives. They came out of the woodwork to help re-elect Gov. Scott Walker and the recall re-invigorated the Tea Party. But it also gave conservatives an important test run of their ground game.

As a ground-game organizer for American Majority Action, I can attest that having just built up a significant GOTV operation for the June 5 recall election has made it much easier to build it up even bigger before November 6. Not only that, but the recall election allowed conservatives the chance to use cutting edge canvassing technologies, such as Political Gravity, which American Majority Action and other conservatives groups use. We are now more efficiently reaching voters and able to target the swing voters that could tip the balance in this election.

American Majority Action has nearly knocked on 85,000 doors in Wisconsin in the past several weeks and will eclipse 100,000 by November 6. Had the recall election not happened, I doubt we would have been able to as easily and efficiently knock on this many doors.

When you factor the conservative ground game into the polling data in Wisconsin, you see why Obama is frantically coming to Wisconsin so much in the final 5 days of the campaign. This is a Presidency that is on the ropes and he is afraid Wisconsin could land the knockout blow.