This past month, the Economist came to Alma to explore “The country road to the White House”. It was a stop on a trip through Western Wisconsin.
At a meeting with members of a small book club early on a Wednesday morning, the reporter asked why more local people voted Republican in the last two presidential elections than in the two previous ones.
“We had a tough time answering that question,” one person reported. Another, a neighbor and a good friend, was quoted as saying, somewhat in jest, “We’re the last Democrats in Buffalo County, and that is why we meet back here in Kevlar vests.”
“Their species became endangered abruptly,” the reporter wrote in her story. “In every presidential election between 1988 and 2012, Buffalo County voted for the Democratic candidate. But in 2016 Donald Trump won the county by 22 points … (and) carried Buffalo easily again in 2020.”
The point of the story, like many stories about the presidential race, was “Mr. Trump’s appeal to rural white voters (that) is fundamental to his strength.” The implication is that many rural white voters who used to vote Democratic have switched.
In Western Wisconsin (the 15 counties that run generally from La Crosse north to St. Croix and east to Clark, Taylor and Jackson) that is part of the story, but a relatively small part.
The main story is that more people are voting.
After four presidential races dating from 2004, in which turnout didn’t vary by more than 3,000, turnout in 2020 jumped by 40,000, from 355,000 to 395,000, the highest for any election ever in our part of the state.
In each of the last four governor’s races turnout increased. In 2022, some 315,000 went to the polls, 80,000 more than voted in 2010 and the most ever for an off-year election.
In last year’s non-partisan Supreme Court race, turnout was two-thirds higher than in 2019, the most recent comparable Supreme Court election.
What has been the effect? Who are these additional voters voting for? What is motivating them to get off their couches and participate?
Most of the attention has been given to the presidential races and it is those results that give rise to the Kevlar jokes. When turnout increased by 40,000 in 2020, the normal Republican vote for president jumped 40,000. All the additional votes went to Trump who got between 40 and 45 thousand more votes than either Bush in 2004 or Romney in 2012, the previous high watermarks for Republicans.
The vote for Biden in 2020 dropped off some from the normal Democratic presidential total, but not by much. Biden’s total was some 10,000 fewer than Kerry’s in 2004 and Obama’s in 2012.
Democrats who since 2004 had been winning competitive presidential races in Western Wisconsin by some 10,000, lost the area in 2020 by 40,000.
In presidential elections, the longer-term story in Western Wisconsin is not that Democrats are disappearing but that new voters have been motivated to get registered and they voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and all the other Republicans on the ballot in those years.
One example. In our Assembly District that had long voted Democrat the incumbent lost in 2016 by a substantial margin. In the week after the election, Kathleen went over to Whitehall to look at election records to try to make sense of what happened, not just there but across the district.
She found a lot of new voters had showed up. Some 26 percent of those who voted registered to vote on election day and voted for the first time. From the registration cards, many of those new voters were in their 40s or older. Some appeared to be whole families. (The new voters for Trump in 2016 didn’t add to overall turnout that year as their numbers were offset by the fair number of Democrats who usually voted only in presidential elections but were not enthusiastic about Clinton and stayed home.)
The increase in Republican votes in rural areas didn’t just happen. For more than a decade, conservative organizations including Americans for Prosperity, the National Rifle Association, Wisconsin Family Action, and the National Center for Life and Liberty have worked on voter turnout.
From the beginning, those organizations focused on rural areas. Increasingly their emphasis has been on voter recruiting, voter registration, and motivating people to vote, often working through churches and religious organizations. Trump added the emotional force.
The longstanding historical pattern – Democrats do better when more people vote – was broken. Presidential elections, when more people vote, have consistently been better for Democrats in Western Wisconsin than off-year elections for governor.
The turnaround that we saw in the presidential election in 2020, when turnout was the largest in history and the Republicans did better, does not bode well for Democrats if it continues.
On the other hand, the last four races for governor – going back to 2010 -- tell a different story. In each of those off-year elections, turnout in Western Wisconsin increased and Democrats did better. By 2022 the cumulative increase had reached 80,000 and of that increase, 54 percent went to the Democratic candidate.
The largest jump in voters and the largest jump in the Democratic vote was in 2018, the first off-year after Trump won. That year in Western Wisconsin, 43,000 more people voted than in the previous race for governor. Of that increase 33,000, or 77 percent, went to Tony Evers.
Evers won statewide, defeating Scott Walker, because the same dynamic was taking place in the rest of the state. The Democrats who tended to vote only in presidential races woke up and realized other races were equally important.
In the Supreme Court race last year, the trend by Democrats to turn out for off-year elections went on steroids. The number who voted in our 15 counties was two-thirds higher than in 2019, the previous comparable Supreme Court election. Some 55 percent of the increase went to the candidate endorsed by the Democrats. The same percent as the winner’s statewide margin.
What do these somewhat contradictory trends tell us about the politics of Western Wisconsin?
One: In presidential races Democrats need to motivate rural voters who have never voted before if they are going to keep pace with Republicans. In the last two elections the new rural Republican voters have been offset by Democratic gains in Madison and the Milwaukee suburbs, but that may not last. The statewide Democratic vote has not increased since hitting a highwater mark in 2008.
Two: The pool of non-voters is where the action must be for Democrats if they want to continue winning. Changing life time habits of voting is difficult. Not many switch from one party to the other. The pool of non-voters is much greater. Even in Wisconsin, which has one of the highest percentages of voters, still more than 20 percent of our voting age population is not registered and do not vote. Campaign strategies and walk lists for volunteers to knock on doors can’t be limited to registered voters.
Three: Democrats are becoming more regular voters, showing up more consistently in off-year elections. Historically, Republicans have been the more regular voters, with Democrats being more motivated in presidential years. That seems to be changing.
The shift shows up in the Western Wisconsin numbers. Democratic turnout in off-year elections is coming closer to that of presidential years while the new Republican voters who showed up to vote for Trump in 2020 were less likely than traditional Republican voters to come back two years later to vote for governor. The numbers indicate that only about a quarter of them did.
Four: It’s not time yet for the Kevlar vests. But Democrats have work to do out here.
Thanks for hashing out the data. Understanding first is the key. Thankfully we have folks like you and Kathleen to do that for us!
Very insightful observations regarding a "forgotten" voting geography of Wisconsin. Worth reading and sharing with others.