There are both statewide and local signs for how election races are going.
Statewide, Jake of Jake’s Economic TA Funhouse (blogs often have inventive names) is right that, short of an improbable collapse for the major-parties’ strongholds, the areas to watch are the counties that have supported both Walker (’10, ’12) and Obama (’08, ’12).
Locally, for the school referendum race, there are (to my mind) two questions: (1) what’s turnout in the city (Whitewater proper), and (2) what happens in Jefferson County and Rock County communities within the district?
If Whitewater’s turnout should be high (closer to presidential than a gubernatorial year), then the referendum wins, perhaps comfortably. Even if there’s high turnout elsewhere, a big turnout of the kind the city can produce will decide the question.
If city turnout is lower (as in a regular gubernatorial year, for example), then it will be helpful to watch how the Jefferson and Rock County areas of the district vote. Old-timers look to a City of Whitewater v. Town of Whitewater dynamic, but the district is bigger than that, and the votes of towns in those counties (in the district at least in part) will amount to several hundred votes.
Local politics have been mostly uncontroversial, almost quiet.
One can expect Rep. Andy Jorgensen to be re-elected in the 43rd Assembly District, Rep. Janis Ringhand to win in the 15th State Senate District, and Rep. Steve Nass to win his race to represent the 11th State Senate District.
One odd note about both Scott Walker and Mary Burke in Whitewater: they each visited on Sunday, but neither had huge crowds. (Gov. Walker visited earlier than Ms. Burke, and considering her supper-hour arrival, both candidates had good-but-modest turnout.)
I’m not sure if that’s Whitewater, if that’s the amount of notice the campaigns gave, or if that’s how this race has worn with voters.
It’s not been a season of huge fanfare and excitement, as sometimes happens in a presidential year. People are committed to their candidates (or opposed to a candidate with comparable intensity), but there just don’t seem to be many happy, lighthearted voters.
However this ends, I’d expect continuing contention in Wisconsin’s politics.