Wisconsin.

[S019]

In recent years, Wisconsin has emerged as America's premier swing state being hotly contested in all but one election during this millennium. However, before 2010, Wisconsin seemed to be a leaning blue state with Democrats picking up the governorship and most row offices in the red leaning year of 2002 and also Democrats holding both Senate seats until 2010. Despite narrow Democratic victories presidentially in 2000 and 2004, the state seemed to have at least somewhat of a Democratic lean. Then came the Republican landslide of 2010, where Republicans captured all but one row office, with Republicans winning races by sizable margins. A pattern repeated in 2014. Then in 2016, a year where Wisconsin was widely expected to tack back to the left, and by some expectations, by sizable margins, Republicans not only won its electoral votes for the first time since 1984, but also won a Senate election in a presidential year for the first time since 1980. The 2016 election was especially notable for the Democratic collapse in the Southwest, with Hillary Clinton performing worse in that region of the state than all Democratic row office nominees in 2014 as well as the past several presidential nominees. The Democratic slide continued in the Driftless in 2020. The Democrats only again captured the state due to strong Democratic trends towards the party in the traditionally Republican Milwaukee suburbs. So, the question remains where exactly does Wisconsin go over the next few years, and the next decade, the state has remained perennially competitive, despite a large change in coalitions, yet it now seems Republicans maintain the stronger hand in the state, with the state having voted right of the NPV in the 2016 Presidential and Senate elections, 2018 Governor and row office elections, and the 2020 presidential election, sometimes by significant margins, such as voting around 7 pts right of the nation in the 2018 Governor race. The trends in this state seem unclear, and lots of questions do need to be answered, namely how durable are the Democratic inroads in the Milwaukee region and the Republican inroads in Driftless, and how far can the Democrats fall in Driftless and the Republicans in Milwaukee. This is one state whose political future, I'm most unsure about, however my guess is that the Democrats eventually max out in the Milwaukee region, but continue to fall in Driftless, turning it into a somewhat Lean R state.

[If my soul was made of stone]

The other big question mark is how much Democrats can improve in the Fox Valley (Outagamie and Winnebago Counties) and Brown County (Green Bay), which are quite conservative for a small metro; typically, Winnebago has been a swing county and the other two Republican except in landslides (1996, 2008), but Biden won without carrying any of them. Narrowing the margin in the three counties was crucial to his victory, as well as Evers' in 2018, but continued inroads there will probably be essential in the future, especially since Evers' Driftless numbers probably aren't coming back.

[Roll Roons]

Another thing to consider is that Madison is growing very, very rapidly. If nothing else, that should help Democrats have a high floor in the state.

[Kuumo]

Democrats are probably done in Wisconsin in the long term unless they keep making gains in the WOW counties. Voting 3-4 points to the right of the nation twice with more room to fall in rural areas doesn't look good for Democrats' chances.

[Schiff for Senate]

I don't think Southwest Wisconsin / Wisconsin's 3rd District is going to go any further Republican, but I don't think Democratic performance there is going to go back to the days of Obama, either. Southwest Wisconsin, as many here have mentioned, shifted harder to the right than any other region in the state. This has translated to GOP improvements down the ballot - look at Ron Kind. Kind is the popular Democratic representative for WI-03 since 1997. In the GOP wave year of 2014, he won by 13%. In 2016, he didn't even have a challenger. In 2018, he won by nearly 20%, which seems impressive until you consider that 2014 was a red wave year and 2018 was a blue year, making his victory almost underwhelming. And in 2020, an all right year for both parties as far as House elections go, he won by less than 3%. The real question is if in 2022 (likely to be a good year for the GOP) Kind will lose reelection. It's important to note that while the GOP controls the Wisconsin legislature, the Governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, is a Democrat, and he gets to approve the legislature's redistring plans, so they likely won't escape with redistricting Kind out of his seat. But again, if Kind barely won in 2020, it seems highly possible he will lose in 2022. The district's CPVI has also gone from even to R+4. (A very similar example is true in IL-17, which went for Obama and Trump twice each, and which elected Cheri Bustos (D) to her first term in 2016 by over 20%, but voted for her in 2020 by just 5%.)

 There aren't many other places, outside the WOW counties and the surprisingly Republican Fox Valley, for Democrats to expand, so their best bet right now is to recover Obama/Trump votes in the Southwest. Should Kind lose in 2022, it will be a good indication of WI-03 becoming Republican. So Democrats need to choose whether to focus on Romney/Trump/Trump and Romney/Trump/Biden areas (the WOW Counties region) or on Obama/Trump/Trump and Obama/Clinton/Trump votes (WI-03). They can't have it both ways, but if they don't maintain (or improve) their performance in the former and/or improve their performance in the latter, they can't win Wisconsin. Biden barely won in 2020 in WI, and that was largely due to the WOW counties shifting bluer. If Trump isn't on the ballot in 2024, they might just shift back to the GOP. The Democrats either need to stop this Republican resurgance in the WOW counties, or pick up lost votes in WI-03. Since the former will be difficult and is unlikely, they need to focus on the latter - which definitely won't be happening if Kind loses reelection, so Kind's performance in 2022 will be a good indicator of where those crucial votes in Southwest Wisconsin are headed.