It was a nail-biting finish in Wisconsin, but when the final seat was decided yesterday afternoon the Democrats had fallen short in their effort to overturn the Republican majority in the state senate, winning only two of the six recall elections when they needed three.

First, a quick recap of the background. Wisconsin, a traditionally Democrat state, last year elected a new Republican governor, Scott Walker, with a majority in both houses of the state legislature and a mandate to cut government spending.

Walker, however, proceeded not just to cut benefits for public sector employees, but also to drastically reduce their rights of collective bargaining. This provoked outrage from the public sector unions, an occupation of the state capitol and a strike by Democrat senators — none of which succeeded in stopping the legislation.

The next step was to try to overturn Walker’s majority by filing recall petitions against Republican senators. Enough signatures were gathered to force six Republicans to this week’s recall elections. (Republicans also counter-petitioned against three Democrat senators; one was comfortably re-elected, the other two face the polls next week but are expected to survive.)

Of all the issues the Democrats could choose to fight on, this is the one that probably reflects the largest difference between their activist base and the electorate at large. Public sector unions are not a popular cause — Walker clearly struck a chord with many voters in arguing that excessive benefits for the state’s workers made a big contribution to the budgetary problems — but they are disproportionately important to the Democratic Party.

It’s true that in some of Walker’s obsessions — his insistence on tax cuts for the wealthy in the face of a deficit, and persevering with the attack on the unions even after they’d indicated a willingness to concede the necessary savings — there were signs of the craziness that has engulfed the modern Republican party. But the idea that you could build a genuine populist movement around the public sector unions always seemed implausible.

After an expensive and nasty campaign, the result, as Nate Silver explains, was very close. Two of the six Republicans were relatively untroubled and one lost decisively, but in the other three races the margins were less than 4% either way. In the end, the Democrats were only able to reel in one of them, with a slim 51.1%.

So while the day was certainly a victory for the Republicans, it was not a triumph. As Jon Chait points out: “Even triggering, let alone winning, a recall election is fairly rare. Winning two is highly unusual.” Assuming the two challenged Democrats get back next week, the Republicans will finish with the narrowest of majorities in the state senate, 17 to 16.

(One can’t help wondering at this point what The Age, which tells us that Ted Baillieu on 45-43 “has a one-vote majority”, would call this: perhaps a half-seat majority?)

It’s also worth remembering that all six of the Republicans were elected in 2008 (the senate has staggered four-year terms), a strong Democrat year, so for the Democrats to get swings in their favour was never going to be easy. By showing that recalls are possible they have surely done enough to slow Walker’s momentum; on the other hand, their promise to go ahead with a recall petition against Walker himself now looks like a losing proposition.

With the senate now finally balanced, moderate Republican Dale Schultz, who tried to find a compromise on the collective bargaining legislation and ended up voting with the Democrats, will find himself in a position of great power. But the dramatic scenes of last March are unlikely to be repeated: Governor Walker has probably learned to be a bit more cautious in future.