When a state like Wisconsin stays politically competitive for decades, you might think it’s a sign of stability — that its “purple” character is somehow locked in and unchanging.
But you’d be wrong.
Look at the map and you see change everywhere. The cities and suburbs of Milwaukee and Madison have gotten bluer. Rural Wisconsin has gotten redder. Most Wisconsin voters live in places that are trending in one political direction or the other.
But the state persists as a partisan battleground because all those regional shifts over the past two decades have somehow canceled each other out.
Will that keep happening in the years to come? Will Democratic gains in southern Wisconsin and Republican gains in central and northern Wisconsin continue to magically “equal out”?
It’s certainly possible. But there is no reason to assume so, given the sheer level of churn in our politics.
Shifts in map
Consider what has happened to the political map in just the past 20 years.
We’ve had four very close, very big Wisconsin elections in recent memory. They occurred in 2000 (for president), 2004 (president), 2016 (president) and 2018 (governor). All four saw hefty turnouts of 60% or more of voting-age adults. All four were decided by roughly a percentage point or less.
But on closer inspection, the second two look different than the first two in key respects. Geographic and demographic voting patterns have shifted. Purple Wisconsin then isn’t the same as purple Wisconsin now.
To quantify those changes, I averaged the county-by-county results from 2000 and 2004, treating those races as one election, since their voting patterns are quite similar. Then I did the same for 2016 and 2018, averaging those two elections, since they’re more similar to each other in their voting patterns than they are to the earlier races.
In both pairs of elections, the big picture is one of near-perfect partisan parity. The combined statewide vote in 2000 and 2004 was 48.8 percent Democratic and 48.5 percent Republican. The combined statewide vote in 2016 and 2018 was 47.9 percent Democratic and 47.8 percent Republican. Looking at the state as a whole, it seems as if nothing much has changed in two decades.
But when you break Wisconsin into its parts, it’s clear that a great deal has changed.
First, let’s look at where the state has gotten bluer. The Democratic Party’s gains have occurred almost entirely in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets. In fact, they have occurred chiefly in four places: the city of Milwaukee, the suburbs of Milwaukee, the city of Madison, and the suburbs of Madison.
In these four areas combined, Democrats saw a net gain of nearly 130,000 votes from the 50-50 elections of 2000/2004 to the 50-50 elections of 2016/2018. That’s a big number. It’s the equivalent of 4 percentage points or more in a major statewide race.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of where those Democratic gains occurred (the numbers are rounded for simplicity):
City of Madison: A gain of 39,000 votes.
Dane County suburbs of Madison: A gain of 31,000 votes.
City of Milwaukee: A gain of 24,000 votes.
Milwaukee County suburbs: A gain of 23,000 votes.
Waukesha and Ozaukee counties: A gain of 11,000 votes.
Another way of putting it: in close statewide elections, Democrats are now winning the city of Madison by almost 40,000 votes more than they did in the early 2000s. They’re winning the city of Milwaukee by an additional 24,000 votes.
Meanwhile, their gains are just as significant in the suburbs of these very blue cities. Democrats have even made inroads in the past two years in the Republican outer suburbs of Milwaukee (by reducing their losing margins in Waukesha and Ozaukee counties).
Growing gaps
These…
