Wisconsin has been the closest state in the Midwest in the past two presidential elections, and Trump will need to “wow” voters there to win it back.
WOW isn't just capitalized because it's an exclamation point: It's also a political acronym for Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha, the suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee that regularly serve as the group that votes the most for statewide Republican candidates.
A big win here would increase the Republicans' chances of victory.
The problem for Trump is that his approval rating in these counties is sluggish compared to pre-2016 Republican norms. 2012Mitt Romney won Ozaukee County by 31 points and won Waukesha by a landslide 34 points.
Trump's margin of victory in these areas was Decline in 2016: Scored 19 points at Ozaukee and 27 points at Waukesha. State of 2020 That's mainly because the gap has narrowed again, to 21 points in Waukesha and just 12 points in Ozaukee.
Trump is experiencing similar declines in high-income, highly educated zip codes across the country. And in the WOW Zones. Half of the residents of both counties Have at least a college degree Median Household Income.
Trump came much closer to winning the state than Romney did, as he has done across the country, by offsetting his losses with strong support from white voters without college degrees.
This is evident when you look at a map of the 20 counties. Barack Obama Donald Trump won both. 2 timesThese are located in the rural eastern part of the state or in manufacturing regions in Outagamie, Racine and Kenosha counties.
Tiny Pepin County is a perfect example of this trend: The county on the Minnesota border hasn't supported a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon's landslide victory in 1972. It backed Obama by 2 points over Romney in 2016, then backed Trump by 23 points in 2016 and by 26 points in 2020.
Trump could try to win the state by boosting his already high vote share in these areas, perhaps by increasing turnout. That would probably work, but that tactic could not make up for the even bigger decline in vote share in WOW counties in 2020.
Democrats, meanwhile, will likely try to boost voter turnout in their base areas. Democrats have only recently won a few Wisconsin counties, but those they won are heavily populated by racial minorities (Milwaukee, Menominee), union workers (Ashland, Bayfield, Douglas), and college and government employees (Eau Claire, La Crosse, Portage, Madison and its suburbs).
Democrats hold overwhelming majorities in these areas, giving them a chance to win.
The Harris-Waltz campaign will likely use abortion rights as a central issue to galvanize voter turnout among white college students in those areas. A similar effort in the Madison area in 2020 resulted in a much higher turnout surge than the state as a whole, helping Biden win by a narrow margin.
That leaves Trump with two choices: increase his share of the minority vote or reverse some of the long-running decline in his share of the highly educated white vote.
There is evidence of increased support from non-white voters compared to 2020, with Harris leading in a recent American Greatness/TIPP poll. 65-30 Among non-whites, New York Times/Siena Poll Harris is favored by black voters by a 70-17 margin and by other minority voters by a 60-38 margin.
That doesn't sound very good, but Trump is losing non-white voters by 3 to 1, or nearly 50 points. 2020 Exit PollNon-whites made up about 13% of the 2020 electorate, so a 15-point deficit with them would turn a 0.6% victory for Biden into a 1.3-point loss for Harris, all else being equal.
But that's a big if, and one Trump shouldn't rely on: College-educated whites cast 30% of the state's vote in 2020, so a further four percentage points loss in their vote would wipe out the gains of minority voters.
That means Trump needs to do more than rally his base and talk more to minorities. He needs to figure out how to stop college-educated white people from continuing to drift left, and the former president has a ton of issues he could focus on to do just that.
Recent Marquette Law School Poll The economy is the most important issue for college-educated voters, and when asked about how to address that issue, Trump trails Harris by just six points. On immigration, Trump performs even better among college-educated voters, trailing Harris by just two points.
Trump lost support from college-educated whites 13 Points He will win in 2020, and if he can use these issues to maintain his lead and retain support from non-white voters, he's likely to win in 2024.
Wisconsin may be the key to the election: Trump could win if he wins there, along with Arizona and Georgia, which would put him back in the Oval Office, despite all that has happened since he left office.
That's amazing.
