In three weeks, we’ll get our first battleground state readout of the post-2024 political landscape.
Wisconsin’s election on April 1 for a seat on the state Supreme Court is nonpartisan in name only. Prominent Republican donors and activists are squarely behind conservative Brad Schimel, while Democrats are with liberal Susan Crawford.
Turnout will be far lower than in November, and the electorate figures to be skewed toward voters who are more politically engaged and partisan, making this an imperfect test. But the outcome will at least offer clues about how the political winds might be shifting in what is arguably America’s premier swing state.
There are a few key patterns and trends that enabled President Donald Trump to flip the state in November that will be under the microscope next month.
Vote shifts in Wisconsin were small but crucial. Overall, Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 0.9 points, the narrowest spread of any battleground state. That represented a net shift of just 1.5 points from 2020, when Trump lost Wisconsin to Joe Biden by 0.6 points — again, the smallest shift of any battleground. The biggest county-level movement toward Trump was 6.5 points, while the biggest toward Harris and the Democrats was 1.9 points.
Where Republicans made gains
Against this background of minimal overall movement, some parts of the state did stand out.
On the Republican side, eight of the 10 counties where Trump improved his performance the most from the 2020 elections are in the southwestern part of the state, in what is called the “Driftless Area” (a nod to the unique topography that resulted from the lack of glacial coverage more than 10,000 years ago).
The Driftless Area encompasses counties along and inland from the Mississippi River and is ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of the state, originally settled by Scandinavian farmers.
Politically, it represents a significant growth opportunity for the GOP, having remained loyal to Democrats until more recently than other small towns and rural parts of the state. It was Trump’s emergence in 2016 that triggered the area’s movement toward the GOP.
Does this represent a partisan realignment that is ongoing and that will allow Republicans to build an even bigger advantage here going forward? Or is it more tentative and Trump-specific, offering Democrats a chance to stabilize and improve their performance without Trump on the ballot? Notably, the area did return to its Democratic roots in recent state Supreme Court races.
Where Democrats are in growth mode
The “WOW” counties of Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha outside Milwaukee have historically been the biggest vote bank in the state for Republican candidates, and all favored Trump by double digits last year. But the GOP’s advantage has been receding.
The GOP’s declines here match the national trend of the last generation or so of highly educated, professional-class, white suburbanites shedding their previous Republican allegiance — which accelerated drastically with Trump’s emergence.
Even while losing ground statewide, Democrats modestly improved their performance in the WOW counties last November. In Ozaukee and Waukesha, Harris won a higher share of the vote than any Democratic presidential nominee there since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
That the Democratic gains have been particularly stark in Ozaukee is no surprise. Outside of Dane County (home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison), it has the highest concentration of white, college-educated voters in the state.
Zooming in even further, Democrats’ biggest improvement in Ozaukee in November was a 15-point shift in a precinct in the city of Mequon. In that precinct, the population is overwhelmingly white, with 92% of adults having at least four-year degrees and 35% having graduate degrees — numbers vastly higher than are typically seen — and the average income is over $200,000 annually.
Last November, Democrats were banking on even bigger gains in the WOW counties, which could have pushed Harris over the top statewide. Still, Democrats see an opportunity to make further strides here and to cement them, with Republicans hoping to arrest their slide without Trump at the top of their ticket.
Wild card: The Hispanic vote
About 8% of Wisconsin’s population is Hispanic, and Democrats suffered pronounced erosion in the state with this group in November, mirroring the national trend.
This is most evident in and around the city of Milwaukee, where most of the state’s Hispanic population lives. Overall, Milwaukee County, which includes the city and its inner suburbs, shifted only slightly away from Democrats — from a 40-point Biden margin in 2020 to 39 points for Harris. But in the Hispanic-majority precincts of Milwaukee County, the shift was 10 points, with Harris carrying them by 44 points after Biden did so by 54.
Notably, the party’s slippage in these Hispanic-majority precincts didn’t extend much to Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race, where Democrats’ margin was 51 points. This raises the possibility of a more Trump-specific phenomenon that would allow Democrats to assert their traditional strength going forward.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
