In 3 weeks, get the first battlefield state reads of political landscapes since 2024.
The election of the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat on April 1 was independent by name only. Prominent Republican donors and activists are straight behind the conservative Brad Simel, while Democrats are with liberal Susan Crawford.
Turnout is much lower than in November, and voters are thought to be more politically involved and distorted into partisan voters, making this an incomplete test. But the results at least provide clues as to how political winds change in what is perhaps America’s best swing state.
There are several important patterns and trends that President Donald Trump can turn through the nation under the microscope next month.
The voting shift in Wisconsin was small but important. Overall, Trump beat Kamala Harris by 0.9 points. This represents a net shift of just 1.5 points since 2020 when Trump lost Wisconsin to Joe Biden 0.6 points. This is also the smallest shift in the battlefield. The biggest county-level move towards Trump was 6.5 points, while the highest for Harris and Democrats was 1.9 points.
Where Republicans benefited
Against this backdrop of minimizing overall movement, some parts of the state stood out.
On the Republican side, eight of the 10 counties Trump has improved the most since the 2020 election have improved performance in the southwestern part of the state called the “driftless area” (nodded to unique terrain caused by the lack of glacial cover over 10,000 years ago).
The driftless area includes counties and inland along the Mississippi River, and is ethnic and culturally different from other parts of the state that were originally settled by Scandinavian farmers.
Politically, it represented a great growth opportunity for the GOP, and remained loyal to the Democrats until recently, rather than in other small towns and rural parts of the state. The emergence of Trump in 2016 sparked a local movement towards the GOP.
Does this represent a partisan restructuring that is ongoing and allows Republicans to build even greater benefits in the future? Or is it more tentative and Trump-specific and offers Democrats the opportunity to stabilize and improve their performance without Trump on the vote? In particular, the region has returned to its democratic roots in recent state Supreme Court competition.
Where Democrats are in growth mode
“Wow” counties of Washington, Ozakey and Waukesha outside Milwaukee have historically been the state’s largest voting bank for Republican candidates, and last year supported Trump in double digits. However, the benefits of GOP are backwards.
The decline in GOP here is consistent with national trends such as the last generation of highly educated, professional, white suburban suburbans.
Despite losing ground across the state, Democrats made modest improvements in their performance in WOW County last November. In Ozokey and Waukesha, Harris has gained a higher vote share than the Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
It’s not surprising that democratic interests are particularly harsh in Ozokey. Outside of Dane County (home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the state’s most concentrated white college-educated voters are found.
Zoom in even further, the Democrats’ biggest improvement in Ozokey in November was a 15-point change in Mekong precincts. Within its precincts, the population is overwhelmingly white, with 92% of adults having at least four years’ degrees and 35% having graduate degrees. This is much higher than you would normally see – the average income is over $200,000 a year.
Last November, Democrats were banking the bank to even greater profits in WOW County. Still, Democrats see an opportunity to make further progress here and solidify them, and Republicans hope to arrest their slides without a Trump at the top of the ticket.
Wild Card: Hispanic Voting
Around 8% of Wisconsin’s population are Hispanic, and Democrats declared erosion in the state in November, reflecting national trends.
This is most evident in and around Milwaukee, where most of the state’s Hispanic population lives. Overall, Milwaukee County, which includes the city and its internal suburbs, was slightly away from Democrats, from 40-point Biden margin in 2020 to Harris’ 39 points. However, within the majority of Hispanic precincts in Milwaukee County, the shift was 10 points, and Harris scored 44 points after Biden did it with 54.
Particularly, party slips within the precincts of these Hispanic majority did not extend much to the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin, where the Democratic margin was 51 points. This increases the possibility of a more Trump-specific phenomenon that will allow Democrats to assert traditional strengths in the future.
