Democratic state Senator Bob Wirch of Kenosha won his southeastern Wisconsin district with 58 percent of the vote Tuesday, while Democratic Senator Jim Holperin won his northern Wisconsin district with 55 percent.
Holperin won by a significantly wider margin than he gained in his 2008 campaign, while Wirch more than doubled the margin he won in his last closely contested race -- a 2004 match-up with Reince Priebus, who went on to become chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Their wins come on the heels of victories last week by two Democratic challengers to Republican senators who faced recall votes.
That means that Democrat have narrowed the Republican advantage in the Wisconsin Senate to a razor-thin 17-16 split, which puts a moderate Republican senator who opposed Walker's assault on collective-bargaining rights in a position to work with Democrats to temper the extremes of the governor and his allies.
Republicans point out that the Democrats did not succeed in taking control of the state Senate, an ardent hope of the opposition party and its allies as their pursued their efforts to oust GOP senators in last week's recall voting in Republican districts across the state.
But the final tallies from a summer of recall elections confirm that the governor and his allies have suffered not just defeats in districts located in the north, south, east and west of the state but also a serious blow to their authority inside the state Capitol.
"Scott Walker's working majority in the Wisconsin state Senate is over," announced the labor-backed group We Are Wisconsin after Tuesday night's big wins for the Democrats were declared. "[The] chamber now boasts a pro-worker majority that would not have passed the Budget Repair Bill that touched off this entire fight."