2020 Presidential Elections State-by-State Guide:Trump aims to make Wisconsin Republican turf again
State
WISCONSIN
Primary dates
April 7, 2020 (Tuesday)
Type: Open
Democratic delegates 97 (84 pledged, 13 super)
Republican delegates 52
Governor:
Tony Evers (Democratic)
Senators:
Ron Johnson (Republican) & Tammy Baldwin (D)
Representative: 8
Four Republican: Bryan Steil (1st district), James Sensenbrenner Jr (5th district), Glenn Grothman (6th district), Mike Gallagher (8th district); Three Democratic: Mark Pocan (2nd district), Ron Kid (3rd district), Gwen Moore (4th district). One district, the 7th, is lying vacant at the moment.
Electoral college votes: 10
Donald Trump won all of them in 2016
How Wisconsin has voted in presidential elections in the past
The Badger State became a state in May 1848 and although it was primarily a red state through to 1928, it turned blue during the Great Depression and World War II in the 1930s and 1940s. It then swung again in favor of the Republicans between the mid-1940s and 1984, voting for them nine out of 11 times. The Democrats won seven elections between 1988 and 2012 though George W Bush lost very closely to his opponents in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Barack Obama had fairly handsome wins in 2008 and 2012 before Trump won over Hillary Clinton quite narrowly (less than one percent). It was also quite something surprising as several polls leading to the polls did not expect Trump to be winning Wisconsin.
Wisconsin, a progressive state that flipped red in 2016
Wisconsin has been one of America’s frontline “laboratories of reform” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it. It is a state developing new public policies and debating them vigorously and serving as an example for other states in the country. Wisconsin’s economy has been an outgrowth of its immigration and manufacturing heritage and the state is also known for its labor activism.
Politically, the three large “WOW” counties in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee suburbs - Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha - have traditionally been GOP and they sometimes proved strong enough to cancel out Milwaukee County and its one-sided Democratic margins.
Perhaps the biggest factor in Trump’s victory in Wisconsin was the shift in the votes in the state’s rural (also largely white) territory. Among the 34 counties that saw a 10-percentage points decline in the Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote, nearly every one of them was in the western part of Wisconsin and north of the Fox River Valley, an industrialized zone. The western part of the state has a large concentration of voters of Scandinavian ancestry who are traditionally more liberal than those with German ancestry and settled in and around Milwaukee and its suburbs.
Wisconsin and 2020 presidential election
According to political experts, Wisconsin will be a key swing state in this year’s election. In 2016, it was the tipping point that put Trump over the edge to a win, as per the New York Times. This year, too, Wisconsin will remain a key swing state and the Democrats will hope that their urban supporters come out in large numbers to vote as did for the Republican supporters in the rural counties. The media environment in the state is also a key influencer of the voters’ mind as Wisconsin remains split over conservative localized radio talks and liberal discussions that are more national in orientation.
According to a recent poll released by Marquette University, former vice president Joe Biden was having a slight lead over Trump in Wisconsin (48 to 45 percent) while the president was ahead of Bernie Sanders, the other Democrat still in the race, by two points.