The Badger State has earned its place in the spotlight over the last eight years. It provided the dispositive 270th electoral vote in both 2016 for Donald Trump and in 2020 for Joe Biden, making it the focal point for each party’s efforts to wrest national control: if you could win in Wisconsin, you’d probably already won neighboring Michigan and Minnesota, or similar states like Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for Democrats, there was an undeniable reality buried in the data: Wisconsin was getting redder. 

Counterintuitively, this trend seems poised to derail Wisconsin’s rise to political prominence; not because it won’t ever go for a Democrat again (it’s still red-leaning, but not overwhelmingly), but because Wisconsin is something of an epitome – an average – of the rest of the region, and so called must-win states with more electoral votes, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, appear to have become harder for Democrats to scratch out a victory in than the Badger State. In fact, Wisconsin (now the second smallest “in play” state, only Nevada has fewer electoral votes) is in exactly the middle of the pack in terms of the Midwest’s (and the Rust Belt’s) shift rightward. In part, this is because Wisconsin is the Midwestern state that looks the most like the average Midwestern state. This is fortunate for Republicans and those of us who are getting a little red-eyed obsessing over data in Wisconsin, but unfortunate for Democrats, whose easiest path to national victory still relies on a state slipping further and further from their grasp, necessitating a heavier lift each cycle.

Essentially, Wisconsin has become more like a “would win” state than a “must win” state – there aren’t many scenarios where a candidate would win without it, but that’s only because it’d get swept up in a broader trend as Democratic paths to victory with more electoral votes have opened in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, and Republicans can nearly seal the White House with Pennsylvania alone. So, with gratitude that it’s less likely that the fate of the union will not fall to the heaviest drinking state in the nation once more, let’s get into it.

We’ve written extensively about why America’s Dairyland has shifted (on average, since 2000, it’s become about one point more Republican leaning every four years) and the dangers of Democratic reliance on the state, so it may be worth starting there. In 2020, when Biden won the state by about 0.6%, the state was 3.8% more Republican than the nation (as Biden won the national vote by about 4.5%); put another way, if Biden had won the national popular vote by only 3%, he probably would have lost Wisconsin (and the election). Because the correlation between time and this shift is pretty weak, we infer only a small – but meaningful – shift: all other things equal, Wisconsin is now probably around 4.1 points to the right of the nation.

In the last six elections, a candidate has only beat that national lean twice: Barack Obama won the national popular vote by 7.3% in 2008, and Biden won it by 4.5% in 2020. Polls don’t inspire confidence that Harris will do the same, as she’s built up about a 3 point lead in national polls and the generic ballot (our preferred guidepost) is closer to the D+1 or D+2 range. But polls also have Harris leading in Wisconsin by about the same as her national margin, so what gives?

For one, polls could be off. The polling miss in Wisconsin was bad in 2020 – Biden averaged a D+8.4 polling advantage in the state he ended up only carrying by D+0.6. Yes, polls were pretty off nationwide, and there were similar errors in Michigan and Pennsylvania, for example, but the Wisconsin miss was really big. There’s some evidence polling has improved as pollsters have tried to adjust for a persistent underestimation of Trump’s support, but this is a big leap of faith if you’re a Democrat, and the state’s naturally Republican lean should give you pause, or at least make you ask why Harris appears to be up in a state that should otherwise lean against her.

That brings us to what we do here: maybe all other things aren’t equal, maybe there are other factors explaining why Harris might overperform Biden or Hillary Clinton’s relative performances in the state. Consider this a leery review of what those factors might be before we seek to ground those expectations in a more measured approach.

Democrats may have offset their losses in Wisconsin’s rural areas by running up the margins in denser, fast-growing urban and suburban counties. Though the growing Milwaukee suburbs remain relatively GOP-friendly, they’ve become decisively less so over the last couple of statewide elections and as long as Democrats can depress the GOP advantage in these suburbs, they have a path to offset their rural losses; it’s possible this leftward trend will continue as there is some evidence of outbound migration of Republicans to states like Florida. More proactively, Democrats – particularly the outgoing Biden administration – have overseen a surge in federal funds to the Badger State. This not-so-subtle tactic in a key swing state may nonetheless soften economic woes in Wisconsin and provide a more credible, concrete message for Democrats to run on. 

There is also some evidence that rural voters in Wisconsin are different. Rural whites in the state lag the demographic elsewhere when it comes to Republican voting intention, even though these kinds of voters make up a higher proportion of the electorate than they do in any other swing state. Part of this may be due to the remnants of the “progressive rural tradition” that used to be more prevalent in the state but has declined, or due to the Democratic Party’s methodological organizing efforts in the state ever since their shocking 2016 loss there, or both. But it’s clear that outreach matters. Slightly more convincing is that white, rural Wisconsin looks a lot more like another place with a lot of similar types of voters, though where fewer people bat an eye when Democrats overperform: New England. Like New England, there are many colleges and universities scattered throughout all kinds of rural and suburban enclaves in Wisconsin, and these attract students and feed jobs that alleviate the economic malaise felt by other Rust Belt areas, stifling these rural area’s march towards the GOP.

It’s also plausible that more politically engaged unions drive some folks to the polls, but as the union vote has reddened, we expect these kinds of endorsements to weigh less on a presidential vote than a Senate one. And, though Wisconsin doesn’t have an abortion referendum or any comparable proxy this year, this may provide an opportunity for the Harris campaign to directly appeal to voters on the issue, motivating pro-choice forces to direct their attention to the top of the ticket – much like they did during the recent state supreme court election.

The 2022 gubernatorial election is a decent barometer, as even in a Republican-leaning cycle, Democratic Governor Tony Evers held on in a tight reelection race. The relatively staid Evers was buoyed by independents who turned against the Republican candidate, Tim Michels, who suffered from some candidate quality issues and controversial statements. But, we’d caution extrapolating too much from this; Evers doing better than expected in a lower-turnout off year election is broadly in line with the expected realignment of the last few cycles wherein higher education, suburban voters have become more reliably Democratic, and less-consistent rural voters have become more Republican. Case in point, even if they won the elections, the more turnout there is, the worse the statewide Democratic candidate seems to do (compare Evers’ 3.4% margin in 2022 with Evers receiving 1.1% in 2018 and Biden eking out a win by 0.6% in 2020, both higher turnout years). 

In a high turnout presidential election, expect Wisconsin to be close; and be skeptical of any substantial polling lead Harris may build in the state. Wisconsin may not be quite the key state it once was, but it is foolish for Democrats to assume any kind of inherent advantage. If 2020 taught us one thing, it’s that 2016 wasn’t a fluke.