Gilbert: This was one of the most 'Wisconsin' elections ever: Small swings, wild turnout

If the nation as a whole experienced something like a red wave in this election, Wisconsin experienced a purple ripple.

This state grew just enough “redder” to swing back to Republican Donald Trump.

But it experienced a smaller shift toward the GOP than any of the seven battlegrounds and all but three of the 50 states.

If the nation as a whole experienced a “change election,” this was one of the most “status quo” presidential elections in Wisconsin history.

After shifting about a point and half toward Democrats in 2020, the state shifted a point and half back to Republicans in 2024.

Never before have there been two consecutive presidential contests in Wisconsin where the partisan swings were this small. Never have there been three presidential elections in a row (2016, 2020, 2024) decided by such tiny margins (eight-tenths of a point, six-tenths of a point, nine-tenths of a point).

What we are witnessing in these voting trends and patterns is the most extended period of partisan parity and stability in the history of the Wisconsin electorate.

It may sound crazy to talk about partisan stability when the two parties here have been trading election victories year after year for president and U.S. Senate and governor. But that’s the point. Wisconsin is so chronically competitive that it only takes the smallest swings and tiniest margins to flip the state back and forth. The state is fixed on a knife’s edge.

Wisconsin's purple character is preserved

And it may sound crazy to talk about status quo elections amid the partisan realignment of the Trump Era. But that realignment has preserved this state’s purple character, not disturbed it, with Republican rural gains and Democratic suburban gains largely offsetting each other.

And both those trends, as significant as they are, mostly flattened out in the 2024 election. The rural shifts continued, but on a far more modest scale than 2016, when they delivered Wisconsin to Trump.  And the suburban shifts were muted compared to 2020, when they delivered Wisconsin to Joe Biden.

In fact, the county-by-county voting shifts in Wisconsin this year were smaller than in any presidential race going back at least 60 years.

No county swung more than 2 points in a Democratic direction. No county swung more than 7 points in a Republican direction. That is an incredibly narrow range in historical terms, narrower than in any presidential election since at least 1964.

At the statewide level, too, the partisan trends are flatter than ever.

Almost everything about this election buttressed Wisconsin’s claim to be the most persistently purple state in America.

It had a Senate race won by Democrats by less than a point, two years after it had a Senate race won by Republicans by a point (making them the two closest Senate races in Wisconsin history).

Republicans performed well in state Assembly races. Democrats performed well in state Senate races.

Presidential race result was the closest in the country

At the presidential level, this was the closest state in the country and the only one decided by less than a percentage point. Wisconsin has now been decided by less than a point in five of the past seven presidential elections. In no other state has that happened more than twice.

The unprecedented consistency of the statewide presidential vote over the past decade in Wisconsin is a testament to today’s polarized political culture. (Nationally, we are experiencing smaller presidential swings as well; the swing in the popular vote in 2024 was bigger than in 2016 and 2020 but not all that large by historical standards). It probably also owes a lot to the fact that the same Republican nominee has been on the ballot three cycles in a row, and public opinion is very polarized about him.

But that hasn’t stopped other states from undergoing political changes over the course of these elections. With some votes around the country still being counted, Wisconsin experienced a smaller partisan shift from 2020 to 2024 than all but three of the 50 states: Washington state, Utah and Oklahoma.

The battlegrounds saw smaller shifts on average than the states where there was no real presidential campaign. But all had bigger swings than Wisconsin, which shifted 1.5 points toward the GOP (from voting Democratic by six-tenths of a point in 2020 to voting Republican by nine tenths in 2024). The swing was 2 points in North Carolina, 2.5 in Georgia, 3.3 in Pennsylvania, 4.2 in Michigan, 5.5 in Nevada and 6.2 in Arizona.

While Wisconsin was 5 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in 2020, it will likely end up in 2024 being slightly more Democratic than the national as a whole, with Trump expected to win the popular vote by more than a percentage point.

Massive Wisconsin voter turnout a major factor

What explains why the GOP’s gains were more modest here than almost anywhere else?

One prime reason is that President-elect Trump’s biggest inroads in this election came with Latino voters, and they are a very small share of the Wisconsin electorate. Trump made more modest gains among Black voters, and they are also a very small share of the Wisconsin vote.

The “white vote” is what changed the least in 2024. Wisconsin is the whitest of the all the battlegrounds. And it’s a state where white voters are less Republican than in most other states.

But the explanation may lie in part with the state’s extreme political mobilization.

Wisconsin appears to have experienced the biggest increase in turnout in this election.

The share of eligible voters who voted rose 1.3 points from an already sky-high 75% in 2020 to a little over 76% in 2024, according to data gathered by political scientist Michael McDonald of the University of Florida and head of the U.S. Elections Project, which monitors turnout trends.

In fact, Wisconsin was one of only a handful of states that saw a turnout increase. While the numbers aren’t final, right now the state is on track to have the second highest turnout in the nation, a fraction behind Minnesota.

That suggests that both sides turned out their voters here in 2024, which suggests there was no big turnout differential between the parties, the kind of differential that often produces meaningful election shifts or some separation between the parties. That clearly didn’t happen here, though it apparently happened in other states.

This maximal turnout reflects some combination of massive campaign effort, the state’s culture of political engagement, and the fact that voters have had years to internalize their own importance, based on the knowledge that Wisconsin’s presidential elections are routinely close and consequential.

It could also be a sign that Democrats did a better job in Wisconsin of mobilizing their voters than they did in other states that saw bigger GOP gains.

Wisconsin and Georgia are the only states as things stand now where Vice President Kamala Harris got more votes than Biden did in 2020.

None of this is to dismiss the scale of Trump’s victory nationally, which featured gains across all kinds of geographic and demographic lines.

And he made inroads in Wisconsin, too. The former president got almost 90,000 more votes here than he got in 2020, and about 290,000 more votes than in 2016. He made especially large gains among Latino voters and among rural white voters in the state’s western half.  But the state’s most populous places, whether red, purple or blue, barely moved at all, ensuring that any shift in the statewide vote would be marginal.

In Wisconsin’s biggest city, Milwaukee, Trump’s share of the vote went up just one point from 19.6% in 2020 to 20.8% in 2024, despite his modest gains with nonwhite voters.

In the state’s five biggest counties, Trump’s point margin improved by 1 point in very blue Milwaukee and Dane, worsened by 1 point in very red Waukesha, and scarcely changed at all in purple Brown and Outagamie, improving by three-tenths of a point. Again, it’s the lack of change – the absence of any significant swing in either direction – that is so striking about this and so unusual compared to what happens in most presidential elections.

The biggest regional shifts occurred in western Wisconsin, which has seen the largest GOP gains in the Trump Era. The swing toward Republicans was 4 points in the far Northwest (the Duluth media market); 3.2 points in the Twin Cities media market; and 2.7 points in the La Crosse-Eau Claire media market.

The Milwaukee and Green Bay regions shifted the least, only about a point.

In the end, this was an election where Wisconsin played perfectly to type, splitting the two big statewide races, giving the nation its closest presidential contest, barely deviating from its 50/50 baseline, but turning out like mad.

There was little in what happened Nov. 5 to signal with any clarity or conviction that the political future favors one party over the other here.

In that sense, this was the one of the most “Wisconsin” elections ever.

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Craig Gilbert provides Wisconsin political analysis as a fellow with Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Prior to the fellowship, Gilbert reported on politics for 35 years at the Journal Sentinel, the last 25 in its Washington Bureau. His column continues that independent reporting tradition and goes through the established Journal Sentinel editing process.

Follow him on Twitter: @Wisvoter.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Gilbert: Narrow Trump win confirms Wisconsin as a very purple state