Wisconsin votes.

• Position: TRENDS & TRANSITIONS

The push to recall the largest number of state legislators in the nation's history--special Wisconsin elections that forced six Republicans and three Democratic senators to face voters back home--cost two Republicans their seats. The midsummer political drama cost more than $40 million, but it didn't realign Capitol power. Republicans still control the governor's office and both houses of the Legislature.

Public- and private-sector unions spent millions of dollars on ads and get-out-the-vote efforts to oust the six Republican senators who voted for GOP Governor Scott Walker's legislation. It stripped most public employees of the ability to bargain collectively for anything but pay raises tied to inflation, made payment of union dues optional, and increased what all public employees must pay for pensions and health care.

The four Republican senators who survived the Aug. 9 recalls won by an average margin of 54 percent. The three Democratic senators, targeted for recalls because they blocked a vote on Walker's changes by fleeing to Illinois, won recalls by an average margin of 57 percent.

One of those Democratic senators, Jim Holperin, made history. He became the only Wisconsin lawmaker to survive two recalls. He was targeted as a state assemblyman in 1990 in a dispute over tribal spear fishing rights in northern Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonprofit group that monitors campaign spending, estimated $44...