Is Dane County keeping Wisconsin competitive?

[Scottholes 2.0]

https://<blockquote class=twitter-tweet><p lang=en dir=ltr>In 2016, ...

[pppolitics]

Obviously, otherwise it would be Ohio.

[Frenchrepublican]

Sure, Dane County is the main reason why WI is not voting like IA.

But this county alone is probably not enough to keep WI truly competitive over the longer term if democrats really crater in the rural upper midwest, the big question now is what will happen with WOW counties, does Trump 2020 numbers are the floor or do democrats can continue to make inroads ?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Well if you magically removed Dane County from Wisconsin, Bush would have won it twice and Trump would have carried it by more than 5% this year. So in a sense yeah?

But you could apply a similar reasoning to Milwaukee County.

[UncleSam]

The real question is: is Cook County keeping IL competitive?

[Gass3268]

Dane County is important, but I think the changes in the Milwaukee Metro Area are more critical to keeping the state competative. I'm not expecting Waukesha County to flip at any point in the near future, but low 20 point loses are critical to Democrats having a chance statewide. Given some of the insane trends/swings in the Northeast Milwaukee County suburbs and how similar Ozaukee County is, I would not be shocked to see a Democratic Ozaukee County sometime in the next 10-15 years. Biden would the City of Cedarburg! Washington County is so much more exubran than the other two counties that I'm not sure that the WOW name makes much sense moving forward. Then you have Milwaukee County were almost every non-City of Milwaukee municipality has swung/trended hard to the left over the past decade. There are now only 3 (Franklin, Hales Corners, and Oak Creek) that are still typically vote Republican and even those are now single digit affairs. The collapse of Republican strength in southwest Milwaukee County this election was shocking. All of this happened while the City of Milwaukee only swung 1 point to Trump.

[forsythvoter]

Yes, for now, but it's not so much Dane county as it's the Madison media market. Right now, Madison's metro area is almost entirely contained in Dane, but at the rate it's growing (I've read that close to half the state's growth is in Dane alone right now), I could see it eventually spilling into the surrounding counties and causing them to start trending blue.

I do think the rurals will continue to trend R, so the D playbook probably has to be some combination of continuing to squeeze as much out of Dane (and surrounding counties) as possible, while making inroads in WOW and suburban Milwaukee County.

[Calthrina950]

The county map in Wisconsin this year was startling, and a dramatic change from the close elections of 2000 and 2004, when Bush narrowly lost the state to Gore and Kerry. Biden lost several rural counties that Gore and Kerry had won. But he still won the state-as they did-by significantly outperforming them in Dane County, Milwaukee County, and the WOW counties. Dane County is critical to Democrats now, and without it, Biden would have lost the state by a comfortable margin. Democrats will need to continue making improvements in WOW to compensate for their collapse in outstate Wisconsin.

[Gass3268]

There should also be an added focus to the Fox Cities/Valley counties (Brown, Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago). Biden didn't win here, but his swings here were important in building his winning margin.

[Mr. Illini]

I think Gass hit it on the head. Dane has always been a Democratic bastion. What's keeping WI competitive as more rural upstate areas head to the right is that the Milwaukee area - particularly the suburbs - are drifting toward Democrats. Dems may not win those counties in the near future, but margins matter.

[Roll Roons]

There should also be an added focus to the Fox Cities/Valley counties (Brown, Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago). Biden didn't win here, but his swings here were important in building his winning margin.

Fox Valley was getting slammed by COVID in October. That probably had something to do with Biden's improvement there.

[Hope For A New Era]

There should also be an added focus to the Fox Cities/Valley counties (Brown, Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago). Biden didn't win here, but his swings here were important in building his winning margin.

Fox Valley was getting slammed by COVID in October. That probably had something to do with Biden's improvement there.

Didn't seem to help him much in Iowa.

[Alcibiades]

The fact that Dane in this election also had a five-county Democratic radius is also key; it is perhaps the only medium-sized college/state capital city which exerts such an influence on its surrounding area.

[MasterJedi]

There should also be an added focus to the Fox Cities/Valley counties (Brown, Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago). Biden didn't win here, but his swings here were important in building his winning margin.

Fox Valley was getting slammed by COVID in October. That probably had something to do with Biden's improvement there.

Didn't seem to help him much in Iowa.

Outside of a portion of Appleton area Calumet County is pure rural. There are small cities but mostly rural and conservative, that's not a county that will flip.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

There should also be an added focus to the Fox Cities/Valley counties (Brown, Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago). Biden didn't win here, but his swings here were important in building his winning margin.

Fox Valley was getting slammed by COVID in October. That probably had something to do with Biden's improvement there.

Didn't seem to help him much in Iowa.

Outside of a portion of Appleton area Calumet County is pure rural. There are small cities but mostly rural and conservative, that's not a county that will flip.

As an East Coast suburban kid who was transplanted to rural northeast Wisconsin in 1989, I always had this feeling of everyone in the area harboring latent hostility because we were outsiders not to be trusted. We were neither Catholic nor Lutheran, and I have an obviously Jewish name. My parents thought it was just the fact that we were outsiders, but looking back, there were plenty of new residents of the area that had no trouble fitting right in. It was because of who we were. They also didn't trust "liberal educators" and resisted most attempts to raise taxes even a smidge to make necessary improvements to the schools. And the best and brightest students were sent to Marquette rather than Madison because Madison was full of scary leftists.

The cultural divide has been there all my life. It's only really been in the last 10 years that this divide has become politically crystalized. Anyone from blue state America who has been tossed into a white, rural bubble can attest to this.

[Scottholes 2.0]

Good answers so far. A part of me feels like the D trend in WOW isn't temporary given the fact that Democrats flipped three Assembly seats in WOW this year.

"Democratic candidates defeated Republican incumbent Reps. Jim Ott of Mequon and Rob Hutton of Brookfield. Deb Andraca of Whitefish Bay defeated Ott by 1,325 votes and Sara Rodriguez of Brookfield won her race by 725, based on the preliminary results."

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/03/wisconsin-senate-assembly-elections-legislature-seats-play-results-darling-plotkin-ott-andraca/6120968002/

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Yes, but Dane County is about 10% of Wisconsin.

It’s basically like saying ‘if you took away a bunch of Biden voters, would Trump win?’

[Wiz in Wis]

The northern WI counties are getting redder and redder, yes, but they are mostly smaller counties, and Dane county is still growing while they are shrinking. Combined with the blueing of WOW, WI will stay competitive for some time.