(CBS News) First-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker has survived the Wisconsin recall election, beating back a labor-backed effort to unseat him and again handing defeat to his Democratic challenger, 58-year-old Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. 
 
 
 
 With 94 percent of the expected vote in, Walker led Barrett 54 percent to 45 percent. Barrett conceded the race late Tuesday night, saying that while "the state remains divided," he hopes all sides will remain engaged to serve the interests of Wisconsin families. 
 
 
 
 The 44-year-old Walker -- the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election -- thanked cheering supporters late Tuesday. 
 
 
 
 "Tonight we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country, and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions," he said, adding, "the election is over, it's time to move Wisconsin forward." 
 
 
 
 Walker said that while "bringing our state together will take some time, no doubt about it," he believes "there is more that unites us than divides us." The Wisconsin governor said he planed to hold a meeting with the entire state legislature next week. 
 
 
 
 The recall fight, prompted by Walker's decision to strip Wisconsin public workers of their collective bargaining rights, has doubled as a proxy fight over whether Republicans can push through spending cuts and confront organized labor - and live to tell about it. 
 
 "Governor Walker has demonstrated over the past year what sound fiscal policies can do to turn an economy around, and I believe that in November voters across the country will demonstrate that they want the same in Washington, D.C.," presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said. "Tonight's results will echo beyond the borders of Wisconsin." The Romney campaign said the former Massachusetts governor called Walker to congratulate him Tuesday evening. 
 
 
 
 Can Romney capitalize on Scott Walker's win? 
 
 How Scott Walker won the Wisconsin recall election 
 
 According to the Center for Public Integrity, candidates and outside groups spent in excess of $63 million on the recall election - an enormous figure that easily breaks the previous record of $37.4 million (set in the 2010 gubernatorial contest) for spending in a Wisconsin election. According to the New York Times, Walker and his Republican allies spent $45.6 million on the race as of May 21, while Barrett and his allies have spent $17.9 million. 
 
 Turnout had been expected to exceed the 2010 election total, with an estimated 2.8 million people expected to cast ballots. Reports emerged from Wisconsin Tuesday of robocalls informing voters, falsely, they don't have to vote if they signed the recall petition, among other attempts to depress turnout among Barrett voters using false information. The Walker campaign said in response to the reports that "any accusation that our campaign is making those calls is categorically false and unfounded." 
 
 CBS News exit polls found that 52 percent of voters in Wisconsin approve of how Walker has handled the issue of collective bargaining, and 54 percent approve of how he has handled job creation. Fifty-two percent said they approved of the recent changes to state law that limits collective bargaining for government workers, while 47 percent disapproved of these changes. 
 
 Fifty-one percent of Wisconsin voters in the early exit polls said they have a favorable view of unions for government workers -- a group that largely backed the recall -- while 45 percent have an unfavorable opinion of these unions. 
 
 The exit polls showed Barrett winning handily among union households, while Walker dominated among Tea Party voters. Walker also won by 9 points among independents. The polls showed Walker winning with men and those making more than $50,000, and Barrett winning among women and those making less than $50,000 per year. 
 
 Walker dominated Barrett in the money race this time around thanks in large part to donors from outside the state. As of campaign filings released on May 29, Walker had raised $30.5 million, with about two-thirds of that total coming from donors outside Wisconsin. Barrett had raised roughly $4 million, with about one-fourth coming from outside the state. Part of the disparity can be explained by the fact that Walker, as a sitting governor facing recall, is not subject to the state's legal limits on campaign contributions under Wisconsin law. Barrett, by contrast, was legally barred from accepting contributions in excess of $10,000 per person. 
 
 The rest of the spending in the race has been from outside ideological groups. The Tea Party-linked group Americans for Prosperity alone told CBS News it has spent $10 million on the race since January 2011 on what it says is education over the positive impact of Walker's budget reform efforts. 
 
 
 
 The effort to recall Walker effectively began last February. That's when the newly-elected governor, who had defeated Barrett in the 2010 election, released a budget plan that proposed elimination of most public employee bargaining rights. 
 
 Walker had suggested during his 2010 campaign that he would close the state's $3.6 billion budget shortfall in part through cuts to public employee pensions, but he said nothing about eliminating collective bargaining rights. His announcement galvanized many on the left, who began chanting "Recall Walker" at the Wisconsin statehouse as part of massive protests against the plan. Wisconsin Senate Democrats even temporarily fled the state in an ultimately futile effort to keep Walker's plan from being passed. 
 
 In January, Walker's opponents submitted more than 900,000 valid signatures to the state to trigger the recall election, far more than the 540,208 needed to do so. Barrett won the Democratic primary last month, beating organized labor's preferred candidate, and went on to promise to "end this civil war" by defeating Walker. 
 
 
 
 Walker defeated Barrett by nearly six points in the 2010 Wisconsin gubernatorial race. 
 
 
 
 Sixty percent of Wisconsin voters said in CBS News exit polls that recall elections are only appropriate for official misconduct. Twenty-seven percent said they think they are suitable for any reason, while 10 percent think they are never appropriate. 
 
 President Obama expressed support for Barrett but did not campaign in person for him, prompting grumbling from some Wisconsin Democrats and labor leaders. Among those who did was former President Bill Clinton, who said a Walker victory would prompt Republicans around the nation to conclude: "We're finally going to break every union in America. We're going to break every government in America. We're going to stop worrying about the middle class. We don't give a rip whether poor people will get to work their way into it. We've got our way now. We've got it all. Divide and conquer works." 
 
 Republicans called the race a test of whether they can push through the difficult reforms needed to deal with massive federal, state and local budget deficits. 
 
 "Governor Walker has shown that citizens and taxpayers can fight back - and prevail - against the runaway government costs imposed by labor bosses," Romney said Tuesday evening. "Tonight voters said 'no' to the tired, liberal ideas of yesterday, and 'yes' to fiscal responsibility and a new direction. I look forward to working with Governor Walker to help build a better, brighter future for all Americans." 
 
 Mr. Obama won Wisconsin by 14 points in 2008, but the recall fight has Republicans suggesting it may be within reach for Romney. The exit polls found that Mr. Obama led Romney 51 percent to 44 percent among voters in the recall election. 
 
 
 
 Tripp Wellde, State Director of Mr. Obama's re-election campaign in Wisconsin, pointed to that exit poll finding and said that despite the loss, "The power of Wisconsin's progressive, grassroots tradition was clearly on display throughout the run up to this election and we will continue to work together to ensure a brighter future for Wisconsin's middle class." 
 
 While Republicans held a major advantage on the airwaves thanks to the massive spending by Walker and his backers, Democrats had a big advantage in organization on the ground, thanks in part to a get-out-the-vote effort backed by organized labor. Walker's victory suggests that the newly-legal unlimited spending by super PACs and other outside groups - which was unleashed by a pair of recent Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United - can overcome the ground game Democrats have steadily built up around the nation in recent years. 
 
 While a loss may well have effectively ended Walker's political career, his victory will elevate him to superstar status among conservatives and likely prompt talk of a future presidential run. It also feeds the notion that the influence of organized labor - which made the governor's defeat a top priority - continues to wane. 
 
 
 
 Also surviving recall elections on Tuesday were the state's Republican lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, and three Republican state senators, according to the Associated Press. In a fourth state Senate recall election, Republicans were leading. If Democrats were able to triumph in any of the state senate elections, they would win a majority in the Wisconsin Senate and be able to block Walker's agenda even though he remains in office. 
 
 Sorry, your browser does not support iframes ||||| Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) escaped a recall effort championed by organized labor and touted by many within both parties as a preview of the fall presidential campaign in the Badger State. 
 
 
 
 View Photo Gallery: After a brief but bruising campaign that followed a fight over union rights and Wisconsin’s cash-strapped budget, voters in the narrowly divided state began casting ballots Tuesday on whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker. 
 
 How much — or little — Walker’s victory tells us about the state of play heading into the fall election remains an open question that won’t be easily answerable for days or even weeks (or months). 
 
 What we can answer — or come close to answering — is why Walker won. We put that question to a number of Democratic and Republican strategists in the final days of the recall campaign and, out of those conversations, developed a clear image of what went right for the incumbent — or, as accurately, wrong for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) — that led to tonight’s result. 
 
 It’s always important to remember that no win/loss in politics is ever (or, at least, very rarely) attributable to a single factor and so all of the reasons we list below worked together to ensure that Walker won and Barrett didn’t. 
 
 * The Democratic primary: To hear those who worked in the trenches of the recall tell it, the fact that Democrats had a contested primary between Barrett and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk bears considerable responsibility for Walker’s victory. 
 
 Not only did the primary take place less than a month before the general recall election but organized labor spent millions in support of Falk (and against Barrett), spending that many Democrats believe weakened the eventual nominee. Democratic pollsters insisted that Walker was languishing in the early spring but rebounded as Barrett and Falk fought amongst themselves in the primary. 
 
 * Money: As of Monday, more than $63 million has been spent on the recall fight with Walker and his conservative allies vastly outspending Barrett and other Democratic-aligned groups. 
 
 Walker himself had raised in excess of $30 million for the recall campaign while Barrett collected just under $4 million. 
 
 Being outspent 10-1 (or worse) is never a recipe for success in a race. Democrats cried foul over Walker’s exploitation of a loophole that allowed him to collect unlimited contributions prior to the official announcement of the recall in late March. Of course, Democrats also pushed the recall and Walker played by the rules of the game — making what he did strategically smart rather than underhandedly nefarious. 
 
 * 2010: There was considerable internal discussion and disagreement between Washington and Wisconsin Democrats (and organized labor) about whether to push for a recall election this summer or wait until 2014 for a chance to unseat Walker. (Washington Democrats broadly favored the latter option, Wisconsin Democrats and labor the former). 
 
 As the recall played out, two things became clear: 1) There were almost no one undecided in the race and 2) those few souls who were undecided tended to resist the recall effort on the grounds that Walker had just been elected in 2010. 
 
 The sentiment among those undecided voters, according to several Democrats closely monitoring the data, was that while they didn’t love Walker they thought he deserved a full term before passing final judgment on how he was performing. 
 
 That Democrats nominated Barrett — the same man who Walker had defeated in the 2010 general election — added to the sense among independents and undecided voters that this was primarily a partisan push to re-do a race in which they didn’t like the final result. 
 
 * Milwaukee: As is true in any state that has a single dominant city — in terms of population, profile etc. — there is resentment toward that city from everyone who doesn’t live in it. 
 
 Barrett’s ties to Milwaukee, therefore, wound up hurting him far worse than many Democrats expected at the start of the contest. And, Walker smartly cast Milwaukee not only as lagging the overall economic recovery of the state but also as badly crime-riddled in television ads. 
 
 The contrast Walker effectively drove between the general direction of the state and that of the city of Milwaukee played into fears/doubts/dislikes that many people already had about the “Land of Plenty” (with apologies to Alice Cooper). 
 
 * Walker’s focus: Say what you will about his policies but Walker is a damn good campaigner and, from the moment he knew a recall election was likely, he did everything he could to ensure he came out on top. 
 
 From fundraising to moderating his image in the wake of the collective bargaining war, Walker understood from very early on the threat that the recall posed to him. Unlike other politicians ( Dick Lugar, we are looking at you) who got caught off guard by the forces aligned against him, Walker was ready and waiting. And it paid off. 
 
 Read more on PostPolitics: 
 
 Can Romney do what Walker did in Wisconsin? 
 
 The Fix: What happened in the Wisconsin exit poll? 
 
 Wisconsin Democrat appears to win state Senate recall 
 
 Trail Mix: Outside spending may have influenced very few voters ||||| Brian Cahn / ZUMA Press Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, arriving to make his acceptance speech after winning the gubernatorial recall election, in Waukesha, Wis., on June 5, 2012 
 
 Scott Walker’s triumph in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, beating out Democratic challenger Tom Barrett 53%–46%, will have cascading consequences, as the second most important election of 2012 should. The victory brings validation for his supporters, a potential boost for Mitt Romney and bitter disappointment for Wisconsin progressives and labor unions, if not Barack Obama. Amid the avalanche of postmortems, some will surely point to the structural reasons for Walker’s success: a yawning fundraising advantage, voters weary of Wisconsin’s endless elections or fissures in a Democratic Party struggling to reconcile its fraught relationship with public unions. And while all these factors were important, equally so was the performance of the candidate himself. 
 
 Strip away the massive spending and the bare-knuckle tactics and the spectacle of a state torn in two. At bottom, this was an election about what kind of politician Americans prize. Walker won not despite his refusal to compromise but because of it. He cast himself as a politician of conviction, even when his convictions might not be popular. Voters may bemoan the absence of bipartisanship, but the truth is that most prefer their elected leaders to be ideologues. As a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed last week, a solid majority, including two-thirds of Republicans and 55% of independents, favors a President who fights rather than compromises. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, we get the government we deserve. 
 
 (MORE: In Wisconsin’s Recall, a Tale of Two Parties) 
 
 In his mild-mannered way, Walker embodies the spirit of pugnacity that has overtaken his party. (Even its presidential nominee is embracing it, with stunts like heckling David Axelrod’s Boston press conference.) “I’ve never seen him compromise,” says Mordecai Lee, a former Democratic assemblyman and political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 
 
 Those who know Walker say he has always been this way. Sheldon Wasserman, a Democrat who served with the governor in the state assembly in the 1990s, says even then Walker was intent on maintaining ideological purity. Wasserman recalls an episode when Republican leaders were whipping the rank and file into supporting a budget that included a gas-tax hike to pay for road construction. Walker was steadfast in his opposition, prompting David Prosser, then the assembly speaker and now a state supreme court justice (who survived a referendum on his own fate last year), to buttonhole the backbencher on the floor of the chamber. Prosser “lost it on the floor of the assembly. He started screaming and jumping up and down like a monkey,” Wasserman recalls. Other leaders joined in the browbeating. Walker “had this impassive, stone-like face, and he shook his head,” Wasserman says. “He had a small little smile on his face. He was like a stone statue, and in the end he didn’t bend.” The tax failed. 
 
 When bedlam erupted in Madison last winter over Walker’s collective-bargaining restrictions, critics said the governor, gripped by this sort of ideological fervor, had picked a kamikaze mission in a state with a deep tradition of progressive politics. “I stood up and made a stand,” Walker told TIME in a May interview. But political courage and political opportunism can be the same thing. By starting a fight with public unions, which are long-standing Republican foes, Walker made some powerful friends — who went on to fund his recall defense and make him a national star. 
 
 (MORE: How Scott Walker Went to War on His Recall) 
 
 Which isn’t to say that Walker-the-ideologue is an act. Far from it. “He’s a true core conservative. He’s not shy about it,” says Joe Sanfelippo, who worked with Walker on the Milwaukee County board of supervisors. “He knows what he believes in, and all his policies are aimed with those things in mind.” But Walker has also showed restraint when it benefits him: he exempted cops and firefighters, groups that enjoy strong public support and tend to lean Republican, from his collective-bargaining bill. The decision may have been his career’s saving grace. Ohio Governor John Kasich, who included such groups in his own union crackdown, saw that law fall last year in a public referendum. As Milwaukee County executive, Walker also had a habit, say opponents, of submitting budgets that would never pass but which would preserve his anti-tax bona fides. 
 
 Another of Walker’s tricks is to soften his hard-charging politics with anodyne rhetoric, full of business jargon and clichés. “He’s a talk-radio Republican, but he avoids coming across as angry and hot,” says the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Lee. (Indeed, the half-dozen former Democratic colleagues I spoke to all praised Walker as unfailingly polite.) On the stump, he doesn’t look like a champion or a villain; he has all the color and charisma of an accountant. He is zealously on message, repeating talking points almost to the paragraph. At one press conference I attended last month outside Milwaukee, Walker was asked about the claim that his corporate tax credits had boosted the wealthy at the expense of middle-class workers. “Those are tax breaks for business,” he responded. “Those are tax reductions for jobs.” In a contentious campaign, speaking in bland tautologies can be a useful skill. 
 
 For all the import heaped on the recall, Walker’s most significant legislation is almost certainly behind him. Democrats may seize control of the senate through down-ballot recalls, preventing the governor from employing strong-arm tactics to muscle through controversial legislation. Even if he has his majorities, Walker seems to realize that it may be time to go easy for a while, which is why he insists he wouldn’t let a right-to-work bill reach his desk. “I don’t want to rehash that debate again,” he says. 
 
 But sooner or later, it’s a good bet Walker will find his way to a new controversy, another occasion to rise to a fight. It’s the will of the people, after all. ||||| Vince Lombardi, the man who taught Cheeseheads to think with clarity about the severe consequences of victory and defeat, once offered this gem about life: “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” 
 
 Scott Walker last night showed Wisconsin and the country a bunch of pretty good losers in his recall election triumph. In the spirit of tell-it-like-it-is St. Vince, POLITICO offers up a guide to the top five: Democrats, President Barack Obama, public unions, conservative critics and money monks. 
 
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 reset GOP pundits react to Wisconsin recall Walker’s victory speech Barrett concession speech 
 
 Here’s why: 
 
 “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?” 
 
 Well, politics is all about keeping score — and Democrats suffered a good old-fashioned beatdown. They invested seven months of effort, tens of millions of dollars, exhausted volunteers to collect nearly 1 million signatures. Then, they litigated an extremely divisive primary and spent millions more — all to get back to exactly where they were when they started: with Walker on top. 
 
 There’s no other way to slice it: this was a crippling blow to a party in Wisconsin that not long ago controlled both U.S. Senate seats and the governor’s mansion. Sure, Walker spent gobs of money in unique circumstances to pull it out. But the psychological blow is impossible to ignore and will certainly echo in the state’s first open U.S. Senate race in 24 years. 
 
 “Obviously, the recall is a unique animal. I don’t think people will approach the question of what to do in a recall in the same way they do when they say, ‘Oh, we have an open U.S. Senate seat,’” said Rep. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat attempting to hold retiring Sen. Herb Kohl’s seat. “It’s a very different evaluation process.” 
 
 Tell that to former Sen. Russ Feingold, who isn’t sold on that theory. “It could have effects on the presidential race, the Senate race, sure,” he said. “There’s always the risk of people being dispirited.” 
 
 There’s also the risk — actually the reality — that more than a few Democrats walked away from last night bitter at their own party. Local Democrats are already griping about what they saw as half-hearted support, at best, from Obama and the Democratic National Committee. 
 
 Republicans walked away united, motivated and organized like never before. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Scenes from Wisconsin) 
 
 “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” 
 
 Democrats are right on this score: The race had absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama. Indeed, the number of voters in Wisconsin who didn’t have strong opinions on Walker could fit in the checkout line at Kohl’s. In exit polling, voters Tuesday said they favored Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by 51 percent to 45 percent. 
 
 But make no mistake: the outcome signaled in powerful and durable ways that Wisconsin today looks exponentially more in play this fall than it did a mere month ago. 
 
 Yes, Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to win the state — 28 years ago, when Obama was 22. And yes, Obama won easily four years ago, running up a 14-point edge. But Wisconsin has voted like red-as-can-be Utah since, which helps explain why Obama ducked the recall. 
 
 Sen. Ron Johnson, running as an unabashed conservative, beat Feingold by 5 points. Walker, running hard to the right, too, won in 2010 by a similar margin, and brought with him the first all-Republican legislative majorities since 1998. The big reason: a huge surge in the percentage of self-described conservatives to 37 percent of voters, up 10 points from four years earlier.
– So much for that recount. Scott Walker won handily last night, and today everyone's talking about why, and what it means. Here's what pundits and strategists are saying went into, and might come out of, the win: The Democratic primary was a disaster, Democratic strategists tell Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post. Labor spent millions supporting Kathleen Falk, weakening eventual nominee Tom Barrett. Walker spent more. His campaign and outside conservative groups outspent the Democrats by 10 to 1 or more. Voters are suspicious of recalls. The strategists Cillizza talked to are convinced that the few undecideds in the race thought Walker deserved a full term before facing judgment again. A CBS exit poll found that 60% said recalls should only be used for official misconduct. Nobody likes Milwaukee. Most states dominated by one big city tend to resent that big city, which hurt Milwaukee mayor Barrett. Walker attacked the city as economically weak and crime-ridden. Walker didn't bend. This election was about Walker, who "won not despite his refusal to compromise, but because of it," argues Alex Altman of Time. "He cast himself as a politician of conviction, even when his convictions might not be popular." The truth is that voters "prefer their elected leaders to be ideologues." This wasn't about Obama. Exit polls show voters actually prefer the president to Mitt Romney 51% to 45%. But Russ Feingold worries that the vote "could have effects on the presidential race, the Senate race, sure," he told Politico. "There's always the risk of people being dispirited."