Voters, Not Maps, are the Challenge for Wisconsin Democrats
Democrats in Wisconsin have a problem. Even though recent statewide elections were won narrowly by Democrats, Republicans hold large majorities in both the state Senate and Assembly.
The designated culprit is gerrymandering – the art of drawing legislative districts to favor one party, last done by Republicans in 2011. The accepted wisdom among Democrats is that “fair maps” would solve the problem.
The statistic pointed to most often to support this conclusion is the wide difference between the statewide totals in recent elections for the two parties, which are very close, and the lopsided Senate and Assembly majorities won by Republicans in those same elections.
In introducing a Fair Maps Bill this year, Democratic legislative sponsors embraced this belief. “Republicans drew crazy political boundaries that locked in their party’s advantage for a decade. And it worked! This majority is far beyond anything that can be explained by political geography.”
The fixation on fair maps comes from the belief that gerrymandering is the underlying cause of for the Party’s recent legislative woes. Fair maps will make everything possible. As one senator wrote, “With fair maps … we can pass overwhelming popular policies like Badgercare expansion, gun violence reform, racial justice reform and take real action against climate change.”
With greater hyperbole but a sense for Democratic attitudes, a former Assembly candidate expressed the same thought more poetically. “Imagine a choir of heavenly angels singing as it dawned on us that all these battles would immediately end if we banned gerrymandering in Wisconsin!”
“Yes, it's true, gerrymandering is the root of all political evil, and getting rid of it would be like our one-in-a-million shot at destroying the Death Star. … we could destroy the evil that was 100 times more powerful than us … and instead live in peace and harmony once and for all. Yes, banning gerrymandering in Wisconsin is the key to vanquishing so many of our slothful enemies.”
But gerrymandering is not the main reason Democrats have failed to win legislative races here in Wisconsin. Democrats are not winning because voters have changed. Voters, not maps, are the challenge. Numbers tell the story.
The elections of 2006 (an off-year gubernatorial election) and 2008 (a presidential election) were the last two elections in which Democrats won enough Senate races to claim a slim 18 to 15 majority in the state Senate. Five Democrats represented the 25 counties and five Senate districts running from Eau Claire east across the middle of the state and then north and east to the counties bordering Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The cumulative Democratic margin in 2006 in those counties was some 25,000. In 2008, a presidential year when historically Democrats turned out in larger numbers, the cumulative margin was some 57,000.
Since then, the voting habits in those counties have changed. Turnout in gubernatorial elections has increased by some 70,000. The Republican vote has increased by 85,000, the Democratic vote has gone down by 15,000. In presidential years, turnout has increased 45,000. The Republican vote has gone up 100,000, while the Democratic vote has decreased by some 55,000.
Two events in the past decade changed the political dynamics in the 25-county region. The first was the recall election of 2012 when turnout statewide was 350,000 more than in any previous governor’s race. Unlike previous off-year elections when increased turnout favored Democrats, the increase in 2012 favored Republicans, particularly in this region where additional Republican votes outnumbered additional Democratic votes by a four to one margin.
What is significant is that most of those new voters liked the experience and continued to vote, and vote Republican, in the succeeding gubernatorial elections.
The second event was the advent of Trump on the political scene and the presidential election of 2016. Statewide, that year, the vote for Trump was almost identical to that for Romney four years earlier. In the 25-county region, however, the Republican vote increased by almost 30,000.
Four years later, in 2020, the Republican vote increased again by an additional 40,000. In contrast, the Democratic vote for president in those 25 counties decreased by 60,000 from 2008 to 2020.
What do all these numbers mean? No matter, how you draw the lines in this region of the state, no matter which counties you include or exclude in any particular district, it is not possible for Democrats to win additional legislative seats without changing the existing mindset of voters.
Ironically, the one Senate seat that remains Democratic in the 25-county area is a result of the 2011 redistricting in which Republicans put all of the City of Eau Claire and its Democratic voters into one district, making it more likely for Republicans to win the surrounding districts. If they had left the city divided between two districts as it had been previously, Republicans would now control both districts.
Historically, the districts that have determined control of the legislature have been ones in the more rural areas of the state. They are made up of small and mid-sized cities, villages and a lot of unincorporated towns. Voters have tended to be less ideological and more evenly split in their political leanings than voters in the suburbs and larger cities. Depending on the year, the candidates and the issues, the winners were Democrats or Republicans.
The winning margins in these districts were relatively small. Small changes in voting changed the result. Whichever party won those districts won a majority in the Senate and the Assembly. With the recent changes in voting behavior, however, these rural areas of the state are becoming Republican, sending Republican legislators to Madison, resulting in Republican majorities.
In statewide, rather than legislative races, the increased Republican vote in rural areas is offset by an increase in Democratic votes in Madison, Milwaukee and in the suburban counties around Milwaukee. That increase, however, doesn’t translate into additional legislative victories. Instead, Democrats in the cities win by larger margins. Republicans in the suburbs still win, but by smaller margins.
The nature of representation favors the party whose voters are more evenly distributed. Residential patterns matter and the residential patterns do not favor the Democrats who live disproportionately in Madison and Milwaukee.
There are seven Senate districts in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Some 36 percent of the total statewide Democratic vote comes from those two counties. This leaves 64 percent of the Democratic vote to spread across the remaining 26 Senate districts. The Republicans, on the other hand, with almost the same number of total statewide votes, have 86 percent of their votes to spread across those 26 districts. The difference is about 300,000 votes. This natural advantage that comes from how the population is distributed is a huge advantage.
So, it is not the maps that are the problem. It is the voters.
As long as Democrats continue to think maps are the major problem, and fixate on the political fight with Republicans over redistricting, they will remain a minority in the legislature.
If the Democrats want to win legislative majorities, they have to win in regions of the State where they used to win. This means wining back the Democratic voters they lost over the last 10 years, and attracting enough new voters to offset the growing number of new Republican voters motivated to get involved since 2012.
It is a daunting task. Cosmetic changes in messaging won’t get the job done. The Party must be creative enough, accommodating enough, diverse enough, willing enough, to adopt an attitude and embrace programs that will attract voters in the more rural areas of the State and change how they vote.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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