So how did Trump flip Wisconsin? Look to the sticks

Yes, the presidential election was depressing enough that it wasn't something I was going to care to dig into much in the last 2 weeks. But I've also been dealing with some health stuff that a 50-year-old non-smoker shouldn't be dealing with, so other priorities crashed in.

But I've been able to look at the numbers more in recent times. While Trump gained around 1.5% in margin vs 2020 (going from losing by 0.7% to winning by 0.8%), the Harris-Walz campaign kept even with the Biden 2020 results in a lot of key parts of the state, if not exceeded them.

For example, Harris beat Biden's vote totals and percentages in the non-Milwaukee parts of Milwaukee County. Harris fell about 1% short in percentage in the heavily blue City of Milwaukee and Dane County, but Harris still won those 2 places by a combined total of more than 328,000.

In the WOW Counties adjacent to Milwaukee, Harris addeed another 0.7% in vote share than Biden did (38.5% Harris, 37.8% Biden), and she basically did the same as Biden in the Fox Valley's BOW Counties (Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago).

As part of a deep dive that the Wisconsin State Journal did on bellweather Sauk County (which was the only one in the state that flipped from Biden to Trump in 2024), I keep going back to this passage.

In a typical presidential election, two or three people will come in to vote and register on Election Day in the town of Greenfield, said Susan Knower, chair of the Sauk County Democratic Party. This year, she said, close to 50 same-day registrants — mostly young white men — cast ballots in Greenfield alone.

Working a registration table at the Baraboo Gun Show in late September, Sauk County GOP chair Jerry Helmer said he registered a dozen men in their early 20s who had never voted before.

Given that new voter registrations are tracked and documented, especially sameday registrations, doesn't it seem worthwhile to check those names and follow-up to see what drove all these bros to sign up on Election Day, and where these people are living? I'd say so.

I mocked this ahead of the election, but that story from the Town of Greenfield and the reduced losses for Trump on UW campuses, indicates that the "bro strategy" for the GOP paid off in this election.

But Trump needed to gain somewhere if he was to reverse his loss in 2020 here. The first indication was in the Southeastern corner of the state, where Trump continued to gain in Racine and Kenosha Counties, which were solid blue as recently as the second Obama election in 2012. It has eroded for Dems since then, with Harris not even reaching Mandela Barnes' vote percentage in Racine and Kenosha, and doing 1% worse than Biden there.

But it was really outstate where Trump won Wisconsin. Not just in holding Kamala Harris to less than 41% of the overall estimated vote from the 62 lowest-populated Wisconsin counties, but also because of approximately 76,000 additional voters than oustate had 4 years ago - levels well above where it was in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Which again makes me want to find out how the Trump campaign and their allies found all these voters in areas that haven't had much population growth over the last 4 years (especially when compared to Dane County, or the BOW and WOW Counties). It's either a very successful campaign that Dems better learn from, or it's something else worth asking about.

I want to go back to that Sauk County article in the State Journal, which points out that Tammy Baldwin won Sauk County in her race with Eric Hovde, and that Karen DeSnto flipped a Sauk County-based Assembly seat along with Sarah Keyeski unseating GOP Sen. Joan Ballweg in the State Senate. And as Sauk County Dem Chair Susan Knower explained, it's often as somple as being a familiar face that reassures voters.

“These are our local people, our neighbors, and we were able to really show people that we are fighting for them,” Knower said. “But we don’t have enough of a platform to counter what’s happening with the party nationally.”

Joscelyn Jackson, a lifelong Democrat and Sauk County resident, agreed that community values transcend party lines in Sauk County. Simple name ID and Sauk County street cred likely encouraged ticket-splitting and moved the needle toward down-ballot Democrats.

“Tammy Baldwin is someone we all know, someone we’re familiar with,” Jackson said. “Same with Karen DeSanto. She’s a local person, she’s always been a part of this community, probably for my entire life.”

This is why you can't rely on DC Dems to do anything besides provide money and staffing in these parts, because when it comes to having a connection to the everyday Wisconsinite, a lot of the Coastal Dems only know the issues and concerns of their little group. And why they came to support the Democratic Party may be a lot different than why people in outstate Wisconsin would (or would not) support the Dems.

In addition, Dems lack a large-scale, ongoing propaganda machine via regular and social media that GOPs use to drive complaints and non-issues into people's heads, and it became hard to convince low-info and casual voters that Dems would do enough to change the losing hand that exists in a lot of non-urbanized Wisconsin communities. Add in a nice side order of bro-ism, sexism and racism that never got forcefully mocked and/or put-down by the Harris-Walz campaign, and you get enough things to allow Trump to slip away with a win of less than 30,000 votes here.

But I got a feeling that a lot of the people who foolishly thought Trump/GOP had any solution to their real economic concerns are going to be looking around in 12-24 months, and realizing that not a damn thing ahas been one bout it, and that things are likely worse. Especially if the GOPs start cutting key economic supports like SNAP and Medcaid, and the price of eggs and other goods doesn't go down, but goes up further.

It just sucks that bad things have to happen to a whole lot of innocent people in the process in order to fix the foolish votes of 49.6% of Wisconsinites and Americans on November 5. But maybe this will tell Dems that they need to stop blindly defending a DC political System that doesn't work for the overshelming majority of us, and vocally and aggressively stand for DOING SOMETHING TO FIX IT. And they will likely be charged to expose and clean up the widespread corruption and oligarchy that Trump 2.0 already promises to be, which also will be something that costs the other 99% of us in a lot of ways.