I was going back over the statewide totals for both the presidential and US Senate races in Wisconsin, and found some interesting patterns. I think looking at both statewide races are vital, because while there wasn't all that much ticket-splitting, there were enough differences in the two statewide totals to give us some more insight into what happened, and where things might be going.
Among the state's counties, they fall into 5 different areas.
1. Blue counties who went for both Clinton and Feingold by more than 10%
2. Counties that both went for Clinton and Feingold, but at least one of those places had margins under 10%.
3. Counties won by both Feingold and Donald Trump.
4. Counties won by both Trump and Johnson, but at least one of those places had margins under 10%.
5. Red counties who went for both Trump and Johnson by more than 10%.
I'll start with category 5, because a measure of the Dems' failure to connect to rural white Wisconsinites is the fact that more than half of the state's counties fall into this "Red County" category. Among these are traditional GOP places in the eastern half of the state, but also a handful of counties that had voted for Barack Obama in 1 or both of his presidential elections. .
Red Counties that went +10% GOP
Adams
Barron
Brown
Buffalo
Burnett
Calumet
Chippewa
Clark
Dodge
Florence
Fond du Lac
Forest
Green Lake
Iron
Jefferson
Juneau
Kewaunee
Langlade
Lincoln
Manitowoc
Marathon
Marinette
Marquette
Monroe
Oconto
Oneida
Outagamie
Ozaukee
Pepin
Pierce
Polk
Price
Rusk
Sawyer
Shawano
Sheboygan
St. Croix
Taylor
Vilas
Walworth
Waukesha
Washington
Waukesha
Waupaca
Waushara
Wood
You may want to consider (or not consider) these places when deciding to where to spend your tourism dollars, although drilling down into the municipal level may provide some noteworthy exceptions to prefer.
Now we'll move to counties that both went for Trump and Johnson, but aren't so dark red.
Less red GOP counties
Door
Dunn
Grant
Jackson
Kenosha
Racine
Trempealeau
Winnebago
The vast majority of these places also voted for Obama in '08 and '12, and many are split between the large Dem-voting city in the county, and the red-voting countryside.
I'll now skip over into the "lighter blue" counties that voted for both Clinton and Feingold, but were reasonably close. 4 of these 6 counties are split between "blue city/college town, redder country", and the two counties that aren't (Green and Bayfield) are traditionally Dem-voting places that both gave Feingold double-digit margins while not doing the same for Clinton.
less blue Dem counties
Bayfield
Douglas
Eau Claire
Green
La Crosse
Portage
And then there are 6 blue counties that I highly recommend giving your discretionary dollars to, all of which are traditionally strong Dem areas.
Blue Counties with 10%+ wins for Clinton, Feingold
Ashland
Dane
Iowa
Menominee
Milwaukee
Rock
Lastly, here are the most interesting group of Wisconsin counties to me- the 6 counties that voted for both Russ Feingold and Donald Trump.
"Feingold/Trump" counties
Columbia
Crawford
Lafayette
Richland
Sauk
Vernon
All of these counties are located in the southwest quadrant of the state, are somewhat incubated from Milwaukee-based right-wing hate radio as a result, and are areas that generally leaned Dem over the last 10 years (4 of the 6 voted for Mary Burke over Scott Walker in 2014). And many of these voters are traditionally strong believers in "clean government" and in funding public education.
But they are looking for things to change and improve, and are willing to flip from one side to the other to do so. If Dems aren't drilling theses 6 counties, along with the light red and light blue areas in preparation for 2018 races for Governor and State Legislature, especially given that Republicans are the incumbents in most seats in that area, they are fools. And it needs to be starting NOW, to lay the ground work for people righteous anger to be turned on the GOP governor and Legislature that has caused much of the stagnation that caused many voters in these places to turn Donald freaking Trump in the hopes to "shake things up."
They'll be shaken up in the near future alright, and not in a good way. Let's make them learn why.
In the six counties you mention for the Feingold/Trump vote, the vote difference was only about 3,000 votes.
ReplyDeleteI think we need to be hitting the more populous or at least mid-sized counties to make big impacts on the state-wide and national races.
While we'll probably never win a local seat in Waukesha County - almost 80,000 people voted for Clinton there.
In mid-sized counties like Brown, Kenosha, and Manitowoc (places we lost by a lot) there's a big well of voters out there.
To go after those votes, I really think we should have been able to campaign across most of the state just on the issues.
Water quality, open records, WEDC, the ethics watchdog, debt payments, road financing - why did the Democratic Party not run strong generalized campaigns on these issues? Get the right message out strongly enough, and you're going to see more Democrats coming out even in places like the oft-cited WOW counties and put counties like those I mentioned and the ones you mentioned back in play for legislative seats.
Maybe it's me living in Madison where there isn't much campaigning, but I just don't see Democrats out there pounding the big message the way I see on the Republican side - the sort of generalized big picture effort that's going to pay across the board.
How is a group of people who haven't had "boo" to say in state government for six years still blamed for the problems? Because Republicans are talking big picture while we're bogged down debunking Trumpisms.
While we're at it - Will nobody step up and defend the UW? The way it's been kicked around since 2010 as if it's some albatross we'd like to cast off rather than one of the economic engines of the state is disgraceful.
I'm all over the map here - apologies. I see opportunities here. Opportunities to offer a competing large scale agenda for people to get behind.
Statewide yes, places like Winnebago, Kenosha, and Racine have the biggest "bang for the buck." And certainly cutting into deficits in the WOW Counties and Brown/Outagamie are useful (casual voters need to know Dems are out there, I think AM radio, Koch ads and Packer overexposure blocks a lot of this).
DeleteBut those smaller counties are where a lot of legislative seats can be picked up, and the cumulative losses in those places is absolutely why Trump beat Clinton in the state. Clinton actually outperformed 2012 Obama in Dane County and in percentages for WOW and Milwaukee Counties. But low MKE turnout and getting killed outstate is what lost it.
Bottom line- get a progressive, inspiring candidate that will call out the GOP's BS (the "big message" you refer to), and have a Dem Party that goes on offense and never lets up.
Yeah - I get it. National Dems lost the state by a hair, but we got our asses kicked even further back in the legislature.
DeleteHave to have a better answer for those people than Republicans have given them.
Kenosha was actually tight Mentally switched that with Marathon. Big enough to matter. Lost it big.
ReplyDeleteMight not have won it even with a really good effort, but could have pulled more votes out of there than a smaller area like Crawford.