Can/will Dems overcome their Wisconsin Geography problem?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Random WI question: why is Columbia County more conservative than Iowa, Green, and Sauk? Is it just somehow less attractive to Madisonites?

That's under more influence from Wisconsin Dells and I bet the staff there are mostly seasonal and thus don't vote in the area.

For those unaware Wisconsin Dells is a bit of a tourist trap "the waterpark capital of the world" and is a frequent weekend getaway destination for people from the Twin Cities, eastern Iowa, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago during the spring and summer.

[Sol]

Random WI question: why is Columbia County more conservative than Iowa, Green, and Sauk? Is it just somehow less attractive to Madisonites?

That's under more influence from Wisconsin Dells and I bet the staff there are mostly seasonal and thus don't vote in the area.

For those unaware Wisconsin Dells is a bit of a tourist trap "the waterpark capital of the world" and is a frequent weekend getaway destination for people from the Twin Cities, eastern Iowa, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago during the spring and summer.

Idk, the Dells really aren't too big a proportion of the county's population (less than 10%) and are nearer to bluer parts of the county in Caledonia and Portage.

Map for reference:



As you can see, all of Iowa, Green, and Sauk have robust Biden areas in easy distance of Madison--this is even true of eastern Jefferson which is unlike all the others (and Columbia) in being in hard R eastern WI. Meanwhile areas easily reachable by car along highways in Columbia are Republican.

[lfromnj]

Isn't Columbia just more German?. It borders the other German rural/exurbs near WOW so its basically a half and half of the German WOW influence and the Dane influence

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

FWIW that area is still FAR more liberal than you'd expect based on demographics. Take Portage for example which Biden won by about 14 points. It's an over 85% white town where only 16% of residents have a college degree. That sort of place could vote 14 points for Trump and still be well to the left of what you'd expect. There's definitely something going on.

[SnowLabrador]

I doubt it, personally. Whether the maps get somewhat fairer or not depends on the 2023 Supreme Court election, which I believe is a tossup. I know Evers won by more than Johnson, but I think the Senate race is more indicative of the state's overall partisanship.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So I drew a D gerrymander of the State Senate to see how many Biden seats you can get. I was able to get 19/33 (please note I completely ignored the nested Assembly seats issue):





Despite that and this being far more hideous than the current gerrymander...this is actually a significantly less effective gerrymander and arguably even worse for Democrats than a "fair map" is for Republicans. In fact PlanScore actually considers this a Republican-leaning map that would vote 57% R in a vacuum although that's based on what I consider significantly flawed methodology*, and considers three of the Biden seats (the southwest Wisconsin one, Racine/southern Milwaukee suburbs-based and Appleton-based ones) to actually be R-leaning seats and the Green Bay one a complete 50/50 one. That means by its standards this is actually a 15.5 D/17.5 R map. Walker actually did win two of the Biden seats (the inner Milwaukee suburbs one and Appleton one) which means Evers still got a majority at 17 and I have no doubt he won both this year and I think they're greatly overestimating the southwest Wisconsin's seats likeliness to vote R...but this still isn't wave-proof. The median seat was about 51 Biden-47 Trump (the Appleton one) and in the 2018 Governor's race it was 49.47 Evers-48.25 Walker (the Racine/South Milwaukee one.)

*The reason is that their methodology assigns a percentage of likeliness to vote D to each seat and just averages them out, assuming that they're independent variables...this obviously isn't true. If you have two seats, one that's 50% likely to vote D and one that's 40%, then by their standards there's a 20% chance of Democrats winning both when if they win the 40% seat they're far more likely than 50% to win the other. Similarly if you have five seats each ranked at 85% D, then that means they consider there to be a >50% chance that at least one votes Republican in a neutral election (about 56% if you take 0.85 to the fifth power), ignoring that that really just means all are safe outside of a rather nasty wave election or a very flawed or scandal-ridden candidate.

[Hope For A New Era]

So I drew a D gerrymander of the State Senate to see how many Biden seats you can get. I was able to get 19/33 (please note I completely ignored the nested Assembly seats issue):





Despite that and this being far more hideous than the current gerrymander...this is actually a significantly less effective gerrymander and arguably even worse for Democrats than a "fair map" is for Republicans. In fact PlanScore actually considers this a Republican-leaning map that would vote 57% R in a vacuum although that's based on what I consider significantly flawed methodology*, and considers three of the Biden seats (the southwest Wisconsin one, Racine/southern Milwaukee suburbs-based and Appleton-based ones) to actually be R-leaning seats and the Green Bay one a complete 50/50 one. That means by its standards this is actually a 15.5 D/17.5 R map. Walker actually did win two of the Biden seats (the inner Milwaukee suburbs one and Appleton one) which means Evers still got a majority at 17 and I have no doubt he won both this year and I think they're greatly overestimating the southwest Wisconsin's seats likeliness to vote R...but this still isn't wave-proof. The median seat was about 51 Biden-47 Trump (the Appleton one) and in the 2018 Governor's race it was 49.47 Evers-48.25 Walker (the Racine/South Milwaukee one.)

*The reason is that their methodology assigns a percentage of likeliness to vote D to each seat and just averages them out, assuming that they're independent variables...this obviously isn't true. If you have two seats, one that's 50% likely to vote D and one that's 40%, then by their standards there's a 20% chance of Democrats winning both when if they win the 40% seat they're far more likely than 50% to win the other. Similarly if you have five seats each ranked at 85% D, then that means they consider there to be a >50% chance that at least one votes Republican in a neutral election (about 56% if you take 0.85 to the fifth power), ignoring that that really just means all are safe outside of a rather nasty wave election or a very flawed or scandal-ridden candidate.

Unicameralism time! Surely there must be some way to do the math and work out the optimal number of seats for a fair map.

[Spectator]

I just don’t see it as possible for Dems to ever have a majority barring a mega wave.

However, I think this election kind of jettisoned the idea of Wisconsin’s red inevitability that many, including myself, had assumed. For as much room as there is to fall for Dems in rural Wisconsin, it seems the suburbs are getting noticeably bluer. I imagine Biden would get at least 40% in Waukesha in 2020 and possibly win a few municipalities there in a Trump rematch.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Come to think of it I think I might've realized who is driving places like Portage and Monroe so far left despite being not so college educated: liberal working class whites who are priced out of Madison. People like a single mother bartender or GED-holding bearded sort of hipster guy who works at a brewery. If you want to live reasonably close to Madison but can't afford to live in the most expensive city in Wisconsin but also want to at least live in an actual town and not just the middle of nowhere, those places are pretty appealing. Those places also have a lot of hipster breweries (New Glarus is most famous and notorious for people from the Twin Cities and northern Illinois making trips to buy their beer because it's not sold anywhere outside Wisconsin but is known as some of the best in the region.)

[ProgressiveModerate]

I just don’t see it as possible for Dems to ever have a majority barring a mega wave.

However, I think this election kind of jettisoned the idea of Wisconsin’s red inevitability that many, including myself, had assumed. For as much room as there is to fall for Dems in rural Wisconsin, it seems the suburbs are getting noticeably bluer. I imagine Biden would get at least 40% in Waukesha in 2020 and possibly win a few municipalities there in a Trump rematch.

Wisconsin is weird. It used to be the Milwaukee suburbs/exurbs were a massive GOP vote net, the rural areas were swingy but generally a slight GOP vote net, and Madison and Milwaukee were the Dem vote nets.

Now the GOP is far more reliant on a rural base in WI whereas Dem's base has become much more concentrated to Madison and Milwaukee.

I think the one good thing for Dems in WI long term is that Madison is growing pretty fast, and that growth seems to be exclusively liberal. It won't help them a ton on the state legislative level, but Dane County will continue to net them more and more votes.

The good thing for the GOP in WI is that the rural areas are basically stagnant, compared to say MN, MI, and PA where rural areas are generally losing population pretty badly. Milwaukee proper is also losing population and has been for a while.

As others have pointed out though, WI rurals are probably never going to be as red as rurals in neighboring states due to a scattering of Native Americans and tourism/liberal "retirement" communities.

[lfromnj]

I just don’t see it as possible for Dems to ever have a majority barring a mega wave.

However, I think this election kind of jettisoned the idea of Wisconsin’s red inevitability that many, including myself, had assumed. For as much room as there is to fall for Dems in rural Wisconsin, it seems the suburbs are getting noticeably bluer. I imagine Biden would get at least 40% in Waukesha in 2020 and possibly win a few municipalities there in a Trump rematch.

Wisconsin is weird. It used to be the Milwaukee suburbs/exurbs were a massive GOP vote net, the rural areas were swingy but generally a slight GOP vote net, and Madison and Milwaukee were the Dem vote nets.

Now the GOP is far more reliant on a rural base in WI whereas Dem's base has become much more concentrated to Madison and Milwaukee.

I think the one good thing for Dems in WI long term is that Madison is growing pretty fast, and that growth seems to be exclusively liberal. It won't help them a ton on the state legislative level, but Dane County will continue to net them more and more votes.

The good thing for the GOP in WI is that the rural areas are basically stagnant, compared to say MN, MI, and PA where rural areas are generally losing population pretty badly. Milwaukee proper is also losing population and has been for a while.

As others have pointed out though, WI rurals are probably never going to be as red as rurals in neighboring states due to a scattering of Native Americans and tourism/liberal "retirement" communities.

The growth in Dane isn't as good as you think. Look at the old CD map. WI04 was 40k underpopulated while WI02 was 50k overpopulated. The 5th was right on dot while the 1st was slightly underpopulated likely due to the cities of Kenosha/Racine. *edit  just checked and the Kenosha/Racine senate districts were like 8k underpopulated so yes that does confirm it.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I just don’t see it as possible for Dems to ever have a majority barring a mega wave.

However, I think this election kind of jettisoned the idea of Wisconsin’s red inevitability that many, including myself, had assumed. For as much room as there is to fall for Dems in rural Wisconsin, it seems the suburbs are getting noticeably bluer. I imagine Biden would get at least 40% in Waukesha in 2020 and possibly win a few municipalities there in a Trump rematch.

Wisconsin is weird. It used to be the Milwaukee suburbs/exurbs were a massive GOP vote net, the rural areas were swingy but generally a slight GOP vote net, and Madison and Milwaukee were the Dem vote nets.

Now the GOP is far more reliant on a rural base in WI whereas Dem's base has become much more concentrated to Madison and Milwaukee.

I think the one good thing for Dems in WI long term is that Madison is growing pretty fast, and that growth seems to be exclusively liberal. It won't help them a ton on the state legislative level, but Dane County will continue to net them more and more votes.

The good thing for the GOP in WI is that the rural areas are basically stagnant, compared to say MN, MI, and PA where rural areas are generally losing population pretty badly. Milwaukee proper is also losing population and has been for a while.

As others have pointed out though, WI rurals are probably never going to be as red as rurals in neighboring states due to a scattering of Native Americans and tourism/liberal "retirement" communities.

The growth in Dane isn't as good as you think. Look at the old CD map. WI04 was 40k underpopulated while WI02 was 50k overpopulated. The 5th was right on dot while the 1st was slightly underpopulated likely due to the cities of Kenosha/Racine. *edit  just checked and the Kenosha/Racine senate districts were like 8k underpopulated so yes that does confirm it.

Fair, but Madison is a significantly higher turnout/more reliable city than Milwaukee. I’d say for every voter Dems lose in Milwaukee, they gain just under 2 in Madison.

WOW also has respectable growth, but it’s a bit unclear who that favors. WOW leans R overall but the suburbs have been narrowing; are they narrowing due to genuine vote flipping or due to new voters?

[Nhoj]

Come to think of it I think I might've realized who is driving places like Portage and Monroe so far left despite being not so college educated: liberal working class whites who are priced out of Madison. People like a single mother bartender or GED-holding bearded sort of hipster guy who works at a brewery. If you want to live reasonably close to Madison but can't afford to live in the most expensive city in Wisconsin but also want to at least live in an actual town and not just the middle of nowhere, those places are pretty appealing. Those places also have a lot of hipster breweries (New Glarus is most famous and notorious for people from the Twin Cities and northern Illinois making trips to buy their beer because it's not sold anywhere outside Wisconsin but is known as some of the best in the region.)

I think you also just have a cohort of farmers and working-class local people who are more in the Madison media orbit and haven't moved away from the party like similar people elsewhere. If you have a functional and supportive local party with resources, you can hold unto voters better. Mostly while your point has a good degree of truth to it, these areas have long had blue voters.

[Hope For A New Era]

I think you also just have a cohort of farmers and working-class local people who are more in the Madison media orbit and haven't moved away from the party like similar people elsewhere. If you have a functional and supportive local party with resources, you can hold unto voters better. Mostly while your point has a good degree of truth to it, these areas have long had blue voters.

Driftless Wisconsin has a huge concentration of organic farmers. I suspect that has something to do with it.