What Does the 2018 Governor’s Race Tell Us About Wisconsin in 2020?
The 2020 presidential race in Wisconsin is expected to be close. Trump won the state by 23,000 in 2016; Tony Evers defeated the incumbent Republican governor, Scott Walker, by 29,000 in 2018. What do the numbers from the two elections tell us about what to expect in 2020?
Nationally in 2018, and in Virginia and Kentucky in 2019, Democrats won largely because of increased support in suburban areas that historically have been the core of Republican strength. In part, that was the story in Wisconsin 2018, but only in part.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s analysis of the election reported, “Compared to his victory in 2014, Walker’s performance declined significantly in cities of all stripes and regions. … blue cities … red cities … purple cities … affluent cities … blue-collar cities.”
The story, based on the percentage of Walker’s vote, leaves the impression that Walker and his conservative agenda had lost support all across the state.
If one looks at the votes cast for Walker, rather than the percentages, a very different picture emerges. Walker did not lose support. In 62 of 72 counties he gained votes. Statewide, he got 35,000 more votes than he did in 2014, and 170,000 more votes than he got in 2010.
How, then, to explain Tony Evers’ win in 2018?
In a word, turnout. Some 260,000 people who don’t usually vote in gubernatorial elections went to the polls in 2018, and 200,000 of them voted for Evers, enough for him to win by 29,000.
The increased turnout of Democrats was not just in the suburbs. It was statewide.
Presidential elections always attract more voters than off-year gubernatorial elections. The drop off is not the same, however, for the two parties. Democrats don’t show up nearly as regularly as Republicans. In the last four gubernatorial races, between 80 and 90 percent of potential Republican voters showed up to vote for Walker. In the three races the Democrats lost, only 60 to 69 percent of potential Democratic voters showed up. In the Evers race the percentage of potential Democrats who went to the polls climbed to 79 percent, a 10-point jump, providing just enough votes to win.
In Milwaukee, a long-time Democratic stronghold, 79 percent of the Democrats showed up and Evers won the county by 140,000. Burke, who lost in 2014, won the county by only 99,000 as only 70 percent of potential Democrats voted.
In the Milwaukee suburbs that run from Kenosha County up through Waukesha and Washington and over to Sheboygan, the Republicans historically turn out 95 percent or better of their potential vote in off-year elections. In 2018 the Republicans did their usual 95 percent keeping their suburban vote right at 445,000.
The Democrats usually turn out less than 70 percent of potential Democratic suburban votes in gubernatorial elections. In 2018, however, they got close to 85 percent increasing their total in the Milwaukee suburbs from the usual 250,000 to nearly 320,000. As a result, the Republican margin coming out of the Milwaukee suburbs decreased from more than 190,000 in 2014 to less than 130,000 in 2018.
Madison and Dane County present a different picture, in some ways the opposite of the Milwaukee suburbs. Dane is the only county to increase its Democratic vote in each of the last three presidential elections – the only county that gave more votes to Hillary Clinton than to Barrack Obama. And then, without precedent, delivered more votes to Evers in the 2018 off-year election than it did to any presidential candidate in any election including Clinton.
In rural Wisconsin, Trump got all of the usual Republican presidential votes plus all or most of the 10 to 15 percent who registered on election day and voted for the first time in their lives. Vote totals support the conclusion that about half of those new rural voters returned in 2018 to vote for Walker. The counties that in 2018 produced the most ever Republican votes for Governor are almost all the same counties that in 2016 gave Trump more votes than any previous Republican presidential candidate. But the Democratic turnout for Governor in the rural counties increased from 65 percent of the Party’s potential to 74 percent, cutting Walker’s margin coming out of those counties from 41,000 to 26,000.
Election results in the Fox Valley over the past 12 years or so have been relatively stable. Turnout in the last four presidential elections has varied between 453,000 and 463,000. Except for Obama in his first race, Republican presidential candidates have won the Fox Valley since 2000. In each of the regular Governor’s races since 2010, turnout in the Fox Valley has increased over the previous election by 40,000. Most of the increase in 2014 went to Walker; most of the increase in 2018 went to Evers.
Increased turnout across the state gave Evers his slim victory in 2018. Every part of the state contributed: Milwaukee, Madison, the suburbs, the Fox Valley and the more rural areas of the west and north. Each area added more than 30,000 Democratic votes – the margin of victory -- to their previous total. If any part of the state had fallen short Walker would have been reelected.
The story the numbers tell is straightforward. For Democrats to win in 2020 voters of all kinds, from all parts of the state, must be convinced that their lives will be improved and their communities made better, if they go to the polls and vote Democratic.
What does this mean for Democratic strategy?
There has been a lot of debate this year about which part of the electorate Democrats must motivate to win in November. It is clear from the numbers that it will take all the suggested strategies, plus, to build a majority. Democrats will succeed in 2020 to the extent we embrace all who are traveling in the same direction.
We bring people together by appealing to the community values we all share regardless of who we are and where we live. People who live in the cities, the suburbs, or the country all want a good education for their children, access to health care, meaningful jobs, efficient transportation, clean air and water, safe streets, respect and equal opportunity and treatment.
This is not one size fits all. Clean water in Milwaukee may mean replacing lead pipes. Clean water in Kewaunee County may mean reducing ground water contamination from cow manure. Opening and staffing a clinic in a city neighborhood and opening and staffing a clinic in a small town require different strategies. School policies and funding in cities, suburbs, small towns and rural areas have to be tailored to fit.
We should not underestimate the attraction of community. In the years since Act 10 passed and Governor Walker slashed state funding for schools by more than $1 billion, the passage rate for school property tax referendums in Wisconsin increased by two-thirds. My own small school district with fewer than 300 students approved a 30 percent increase in school property taxes by a two-to-one margin. Voters, wherever they live, understand that good schools improve the quality of life in their communities.
It is difficult to focus on community values, however, when pollsters, pundits and consultants all slice and dice us in every way imaginable. We are put in separate boxes: Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, blue collar workers, white collar workers, college educated suburban women, older white men, millennials, boomer babies, high school graduates, single women, LGBTQ+, etc., etc.
Strategies and messages are narrowly crafted to increase the vote from specific audiences. The campaign manager asks the pollster, “How are we doing with union workers? With single women?”
The problem with slicing and dicing is that by its nature it excludes; separates us by characteristics we cannot change; and focuses on our individual beliefs and prejudices. Campaigns appeal to our differences.
Alternatively, we can think of voting as a community decision. The strategy changes from how to appeal to a specific demographic -- single women between twenty-six and thirty-five -- to how to increase your vote by twenty in Alma Center, by four in Bluff Siding, and by fifty in Milwaukee’s fourth ward. The electorate is not seen as being segmented by race, religion, gender, age, education, and wealth but as living together in communities with community interests that depend on collective action.
In a community centered campaign we act out the fundamental democratic value that we are in this together, and those who would set us against each other will not succeed.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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