Remarkably, more than half of Wisconsin’s counties have lost population since the 2010 Census (38 out of 72), and those losses are heavily concentrated in smaller rural counties.
Wisconsin counties that lost population, 2017 vs 2010
Pop over 100,000 in 2010 – 1 in 15 (sorry Sheboygan!)
Pop 50,000 to 100,000 – 4 in 13
Pop 25,000 to 50,000 – 11 in 18
Pop under 25,000 – 22 in 26
And when you look at where the population has grown, the overwhelming majority is in only a handful of counties, and Dane County is head and shoulders above that small group.
This is significant when you look at 2020 redistricting. In addition to Dem Governor Tony Evers having a veto over any plans a WisGOP Legislature might draw up (if WisGOP is still in control), the population changes will generally mean that more urbanized areas will receive a bigger amount of representation in the Legislature than they get today. Especially us hippies in Dane County.
Those population changes generally bore out when you compare turnout totals to the last Governor’s election in 2014. Everywhere in the state had more voters than they did 4 years ago, but note the outsized increases in Dane, Brown and Rock Counties.
Despite what WisGOP tries to sell people, it wasn’t higher turnout in Dane and Milwaukee Counties that sunk Scott Walker. As you can see, the City of Milwaukee had a smaller increase than any of the other high-population areas than it did vs 2014. What changed more was voter preference in those high-turnout areas.
This was not just true the City of Milwaukee (although Walker lost ground there too, both due to turnout and voter preference), but also in the suburbs of Milwaukee County.
Milwaukee County suburbs, 2010 vs 2018
2010 Walker +9,216
2018 Walker -12,983
Those 22,000+ votes were ¾ of Evers’ margin of victory right there. But even while those areas are shifting to Dems, barely any of the Milwaukee County suburbs are represented by Dems (basically Shorewood, Cudahy, St. Francis, most of Glendale and ½ of Tosa). I’m guessing those gerrymandered GOPs (many of whom don’t even live in Milwaukee County) won’t be making many town hall appearances in the Milwaukee County part of their districts in the next 2 years.
In Dane County, it was a double-whammy for Walker. Not only did total votes go up by more than 74,000 in Dane County between 2010 and 2018, Walker didn’t even gain 1,000 of those votes. Maybe that whole “divide and conquer” thing has downsides when the “conquered” get a chance to respond, doesn’t it?
And let me go back to this map from J.Miles Coleman at Decision Desk, which showed that even the pro-GOP WOW Counties in the Milwaukee suburbs didn't give Walker the huge margins he had in 2014.
For #WIGov, Scott Walker (R) went from a 6% win in 2014 to a 1% loss this year. He improved up north but the southern metros moved away from him. For example, in both Dane (Madison) & Waukesha (Milwaukee suburbs) counties, he did 10-12% worse this time. These were crucial losses. pic.twitter.com/n5kAtotBq9
— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman) December 4, 2018
Lastly, note that the smaller population areas maintained their portion of the electorate despite their declining share of the state's population. You wonder why we have a GOP Legislature that seems disconnected to the reality in the state? It also helps explain how these areas shifting hard toward Trump in 2016 enabled him to win the state by 22,000+ votes, because they made up a higher-than-normal part of the votes, given the lack of turnout in Milwaukee County.
So we clearly have changing demographics and voter preferences happening throughout the state of Wisconsin. The areas that Dems have been gaining in are the ones that are growing, but Republican improvement in the rural areas keeps them competitive in statewide races. And because legislative districts are based on 2010 populations that overrepresent rural areas compared to what Wisconsin looks like now, an effect that is multplied by gerrymandering, the statewide Legislature is out of whack with the overall population of Wisconsin.
It's not a long-term winning combination for Republicans, but it's also a situation that helps explain why WisGOP Legislature thinks they can jam through policies that the majority of the state doesn't believe in. As long as they can grab as much power and funnel as much money to their donors as possible in the time that they have, they figure there won't be much of Wisconsin worth saving once the grift is up and they're all driven out.
No comments:
Post a Comment