Gilbert: Here are the Wisconsin places where gains or losses could tip the 2024 election

It’s plain old addition and subtraction.

That’s one way to look at the 2024 election in Wisconsin.

Republican Donald Trump lost this state four years ago by a mere 20,682 votes out of roughly 3.3 million cast.

That means he needs a “net gain” of 20,683 votes over his 2020 performance to flip Wisconsin and defeat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris here. And those gains must come from somewhere.

There is every reason to expect that Trump will do better in some places than he did in 2020. And there is every reason to expect he will do worse in others.

The political map is shifting here.  Some parts of Wisconsin are getting redder, and others are getting bluer.

This is a look at where those gains and losses could happen this time for each side, using the 2020 vote as our baseline.

But first, let’s revisit where the vote shifts occurred last time, when Wisconsin flipped from barely red (by eight-tenths of a point) to barely blue (by six-tenths of a point).

Despite his statewide defeat in 2020, Trump gained ground across much of Wisconsin.  Compared to 2016, he improved his point margin in 38 of the state’s 72 counties.

These are the places that got a little redder four years ago.  They were mostly small rural counties in the north, west and center of Wisconsin, though the single biggest one was Kenosha County in the southeast.

Trump realized a net gain in these 38 counties of around 31,000 votes (meaning he won these places, collectively, by 31,000 votes more than he won them by in 2016).

That is not, by itself, a huge shift.

And the problem for Trump was that these gains were more than offset by the ground he lost elsewhere.

Trump’s point margin got worse in 31 counties compared to 2016. (Three other counties saw no change in the point margin).

Trump lost these places by a combined 77,000 votes more than he lost them by in 2016.

The counties where Democrats made gains included the three most populous ones in Wisconsin. Very blue Milwaukee and Dane got even bluer. And very red Waukesha got less red.

The raw vote shifts in Milwaukee and Dane were much bigger than in Waukesha. In fact, Milwaukee and Dane accounted for more than two-thirds of the vote shift in blue-trending counties.

Compared to 2016, Democrats saw a net gain of almost 35,000 votes in Dane, more than 20,000 votes in Milwaukee, and more than 7,000 votes in Waukesha. The Milwaukee County gains happened overwhelmingly in the county’s suburbs, not the city, where the Democratic margin was huge but didn’t change much between 2016 and 2020.

One way to look at Trump’s math problem in 2020 is that the ground he lost in large counties and metropolitan suburbs was about twice as great as the ground he gained in small towns and smaller counties. That resulted in Trump losing the state by around 21,000 votes after winning it by almost 23,000 four years earlier, when the math worked the other way: Trump’s rural inroads in 2016 were far bigger than the party’s decline in the large counties of Dane and Waukesha.

Another way to look at Trump’s 2020 math problem is that the rural vote shifts toward Republicans were much smaller four years ago than they were eight years ago. Trump made such big inroads in northern, western and central Wisconsin in 2016 that there were fewer gains to be made in 2020.  And they weren’t enough to overcome the Democrats’ gains in the Madison and Milwaukee suburbs.

That brings us to 2024.

Where is each party looking to improve their performance over the last election?

The answers include many of the same places where the vote shifts occurred in 2020.

But the map also could look a little different this time. There is no guarantee that the patterns of the first two Trump elections will repeat themselves perfectly in the third one, even though it makes sense to expect a third Trump election to have a lot in common with the first two.

Let’s start with some places where Democrats hope to gain ground:

Dane County. The most reliable 30-year trend in Wisconsin elections is the growth of the Democratic vote in Madison and its suburbs, which keep getting bigger and bluer. How much could that change the electoral math this time? Since 2000, Democrats have averaged a net gain of more than 20,000 votes in Dane in every successive presidential contest.

Democrats won Dane by about 67,000 votes in 2000, 91,000 in 2004, more than 130,000 in 2008 and 2012, 146,000 in 2016, and more than 181,000 in 2020.  Republicans would love to slow down this train. Trump even visited Dane this fall. But given the trend lines, it appears very likely that the Democratic vote margin in Dane will grow again in 2024. The only question is by how much.

Milwaukee suburbs. Democrats have made gains in the metro Milwaukee suburbs both times Trump has been on the ballot. If you combine the suburbs within blue Milwaukee County with the three red “WOW” counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington, Democrats realized a net gain of about 13,000 votes in 2016 over 2012, and 28,000 votes in 2020 over 2016 (again, by “net gain” I mean the change in the vote margin between the parties).

The result is that Joe Biden won the four-county Milwaukee metro area by a much bigger margin (86,000 votes) than Barack Obama did in 2012 (45,000 votes). Republicans think they can at least slow their decline in the WOW counties this time, and they would love to arrest it altogether. But the shift away from the GOP in both red and blue Milwaukee suburbs has been a persistent trend across presidential, mid-term and even spring election cycles since 2016.

More: 'We've never faced a threat like this': Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney pitch undecided Wisconsin voters

Campus cities and towns.  Wisconsin has dozens of college campuses and more than 300,000 college students. The fact that the state has election-day registration has made it easier to mobilize students here. And while a pandemic vastly reduced in-person campus organizing in 2020, that is not the case this year. This is a priority for Democrats.

At the same time, polling has pointed to a big gender gap among young voters (with Harris doing much worse among younger men than younger women) which could make it difficult for Democrats to expand their vote here.  The broader population in campus towns and cities has been trending in a Democratic direction.

What about where Republicans are eyeing gains?

Small towns and rural counties. This is the most obvious place for Trump to expand his vote, based on recent history.  There are many ways to measure this, but they all show two things. Republicans keep making gains, but the gains were much more dramatic in 2016 than they have been since then.

Between 2012 and 2016, there was a net shift toward Republicans in Wisconsin’s roughly 1,260 mostly rural towns of 120,000 votes. There was an additional shift between 2016 and 2020, but this time it was much smaller — about 24,000 votes.  In terms of the map, rural voters are a disproportionate share of the electorate in northern, western and central Wisconsin. These regions also swung heavily toward Trump in 2016. And while Trump’s vote grew again in 2020, those gains were far smaller.

There are at least two different ways to look at this. One possibility is that Trump has almost “maxed out” in rural Wisconsin, which could make the statewide math very difficult for him.  Another possibility is that because rural voters in Wisconsin are still far less Republican than in most other states, there could be significantly more room for Trump’s vote to grow there. If that happens, it’s a lot easier for him to overcome his problems in metro Madison and Milwaukee.

City of Milwaukee. Trump will lose the state’s biggest city by a lot, but the GOP goal here is to reduce the party’s losing margin.  Polling across the country has suggested Democrats are losing some ground with Black and Hispanic voters, and these voters make up around half the Milwaukee electorate.

The 2020 election did show the Democratic margin declining a little in heavily Black wards and a little more in heavily Hispanic wards. But at the same time, there was no Democratic decline citywide. Biden won the city by 59 points, slightly more than Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016 and almost the same as Obama’s margin in 2012.

The bigger problem for Democrats is that Milwaukee turnout has declined, exacerbated by population loss.  That has reduced the party’s winning vote margin from a peak of about 171,000 votes in 2012 to less than 150,000 in 2016 and 2020. Any further decline in the raw vote margin makes the statewide math a little harder for Harris and easier for Trump.

More: In the ground game to engage Black Milwaukee voters, signs of waning enthusiasm for 2020 rematch

Small blue-collar cities.  GOP gains among working-class voters have some Republicans looking to Wisconsin’s smaller blue-collar cities for potential inroads, places like Janesville, Superior and Green Bay.  Easily the biggest example in 2020 was the city of Kenosha, which saw August protests and riots that year in the aftermath of a police shooting. Democrats have lost ground in Kenosha in the most recent presidential and mid-term elections, but other than Beloit, we haven’t seen this trend yet in other small cities. 

In addition to the regions and communities listed above, the Wisconsin map also features two important battleground regions that have a history of competitiveness and where both parties would like to improve on their 2020 performance.

One is the Fox Valley region of northeastern Wisconsin that includes the cities of Green Bay and Appleton. The combined counties of Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago were basically a toss-up in 2012. Then Trump won them by around 32,000 votes in 2016. In 2020, they swung back slightly: Trump’s margin decreased to just under 25,000. This is purple turf: Trump won it by 7 points last time.  Most Trump victory scenarios would require him to improve at least little on his 2020 numbers here, and Republicans think Harris will have trouble matching Biden’s 2020 vote in this region.

Another traditional battleground is western Wisconsin, a region that swung hard from Obama to Trump in 2016. But Democrats still do better with rural voters in western Wisconsin than they do in most other places in the state and in the country.   Trump improved his numbers slightly here in 2020 over 2016.

Much of the area overlaps with the hotly contested 3rd Congressional District. Much of it also borders Minnesota. Democrats are hoping that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the party’s vice presidential candidate, boosts the party’s numbers here, but it’s hard to imagine his impact being more than marginal.

More: Gilbert: Why presidential campaigns heap attention on western Wisconsin

One broad takeaway from going through this exercise is that the 2020 math and geography pose a challenge to Trump. After all, he lost last time. And the trajectory of his growth in rural Wisconsin flattened considerably, raising the question of how much more his vote can grow there. By contrast, the shifts away from the GOP in metro Milwaukee and Madison have been more persistent across recent elections.

But there are caveats that come with this. We can’t just extrapolate the 2024 trends and results from the 2020 trends and results. The electorate will be different in 2024. Some 2020 voters have died, a new group of younger Wisconsinites has aged into the electorate, and others have moved in or out of the state.

It’s a different electorate, a different Democratic candidate, and a different environment, with an unpopular Democratic president looming as a potential drag on his party.

We can’t assume that the voting trends of recent years will keep following the same trajectory.

The safest assumption is simply that after two extremely close Trump elections in an evenly divided state, the third one won’t look dramatically different.

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: Here are the Wisconsin places that could tip the 2024 election