Tag: Purple

Rural Wisconsin has gotten redder. The Democratic Party’s gains have occurred almost entirely in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets. 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. It’s the equivalent of 4 percentage points or more in a major statewide race. Milwaukee County suburbs: A gain of 23,000 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. While the biggest Democratic gains by far have come in the state’s two biggest counties (Milwaukee, Dane), the Republican gains have come in lots of small counties, especially across the northern two-thirds of the state. In 2000 and 2004, there was an average gap of 7 points between how Wisconsin’s metropolitan counties voted and how its non-metro (i.e., more rural) counties voted. The 130,000 votes that Democrats have gained in metropolitan Milwaukee and Madison have been offset by GOP gains elsewhere in the state. Their biggest percentage gains over the past two decades have come in the state’s least populous places.