We were both raised in Wisconsin, one of us in northwestern Wisconsin and the other in the southeast. We went to high school and college here, and we live here, in different counties. We’ve talked to literally hundreds of Wisconsin voters this election season, all over the state.
We know Wisconsin. And we think Donald Trump will win Wisconsin. But it’s always a tough fight in Wisconsin, where many elections are decided by 10-30,000 votes.
A lot has changed in Wisconsin since 2020, from improvements in the Republican ground game to the growth of conservative media to a strong push for early voting. There’s great enthusiasm on the right for Trump in Wisconsin right now – more than there was in 2020 – when people were fatigued. The lawfare turned that around.
Here’s why we think Trump will win the state:
1. The Issues Favor Trump
The top reasons Trump will win here are the same reasons we think he’ll win the presidency: The economy and the border. At the end of the day, Kamala Harris has not been able to deliver a coherent message on those topics nor explain how she would be different from Joe Biden. Instead, in what may have been the key turning point in the election, Harris, who now claims she wasn’t the border czar, went on the View and said she wouldn’t do anything different.
The abortion issue mattered here in the state Supreme Court race but has subsequently fallen down the list of concerns because, in this state, abortion is still legal, and Republicans have managed to neutralize the issue – at least enough. It’s not dominating the narrative.
People in Wisconsin are struggling to pay their grocery bills. We spoke to one woman, a checker in a Wisconsin grocery store this summer, who vented that she couldn’t pay her rising rent costs anymore despite working two jobs. There are a lot of people like that. Democrats would have been better served to be honest about Biden’s cognitive decline when the Robert Hur report came out and there was still time for a competitive primary. They should have picked a moderate governor who could have plausibly run against the worst parts of the Biden-Harris record. She can’t. We think people will vote for their pocketbooks at the end of the day. It’s the economy, stupid, and Wisconsinites are hurting.
2. The Grassroots
For years after Scott Walker’s loss as governor, it felt like Wisconsin Republicans lacked a ground and data game, whereas the Democrats were more organized. That doesn’t feel true anymore. Republican Party chairman Brian Schimming has been all over the state drumming up the grassroots, county parties are organizing door knockers, and there are new players in this state playing a ground game. We’ve gotten numerous pieces of direct mail at our houses from conservative groups pushing Trump or Eric Hovde.
The Wisconsin Young Republicans are on fire, especially with door-knocking. The Young America’s Foundation is growing chapters throughout the state. There’s a lot of energy among Gen Zs. Americans for Prosperity, Turning Point (which is targeting people who haven’t voted in the past), WisRed, and Elon Musk are hitting this state hard. Door-knocking matters, and the amount of money Musk and Turning Point put into field workers in this state was jaw-dropping.
Milwaukee and Dane County’s GOP parties are helmed by young, new, enthusiastic leaders, Hilario Deleon and Brandon Maly. They’re joined by veteran grassroots organizers, like Kathy Kiernan and Stephanie Soucek, who hit door-knocking hard. Orlando Owens has been doing work in the inner city. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Republicans have a ground game in Wisconsin now. Moms for Liberty education activists have worked really hard in this state, elevating the parental rights issue (Scarlett Johnson, Amber Schroeder, Amy Scott, and Bailey Walker come to mind, among many others.)
3. The Early Vote
The early vote totals are favoring Republicans. Schimming pushed “bank the vote” early on. He embraced early voting hardcore from the start. Conservatives got that message. It’s never good when you have to make up ground on election day, and that’s an advantage Democrats have enjoyed in the past in Wisconsin. No more. Check it out:
For the 12 municipalities I've been tracking relative to 2022, here they are ranked from least Republican to most Republican. pic.twitter.com/H6542uLkw9
— joe handrick (@joeminocqua) November 3, 2024
The WI Elections Board just dumped the early vote stats from Friday and Saturday.
Things haven’t improved for Democrats.
On this date in 2020 Deep Blue MKE and Dane made up 16.4% and 13.21% of the early votes cast respectively.
As of today, they make up 14.9% and 13.05%…
— Eric Bott (@EricJBott) November 3, 2024
“As of 8:53 a.m. on Tuesday, the City of #Milwaukee Election Commission says it has received 106,750 absentee ballots from the 113,311 it issued. Compared to the 169,000 absentee ballots received in 2020, that’s a decrease of 36 percent,” Fox6 reported.
2020, when Biden won Wisconsin, was a really aberrant year. Republicans were caught off guard by the way Democrats loosened voting rules citing the pandemic (dropboxes, Democracy in the Park, the special voting deputies issue, etc.) No more. The early vote numbers out of Wisconsin bode well for Trump, and they must be giving Democrats heartburn.
4. The Ron Johnson Formula
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson won not that long ago. Johnson, like Trump, is an authentic, outspoken, conservative businessman concerned about the economy. He proved just two years ago that Republicans could still win Wisconsin statewide. So did John Leiber, a Republican who took the state treasurer’s office that year. The magic formula is the Johnson race. He wasn’t outspent. Johnson also ran against a historically awful Democratic opponent, Mandela Barnes, who was on video looking crazy and had a far-left record in the state Legislature. Who does that remind you of?
5. The Growth of Conservative Media
Since 2020, the reach of conservative media has grown and the reach of legacy media has declined. Conservative media is also unified behind Trump this year, whereas in the past, they were fractured. Wisconsin now has an award-winning conservative news site with wide reach (us), which started in August 2020. In addition to Wisconsin Right Now (we’ve had more than 20 million reads of our stories since 2020 and over 1-3 million engagements on Facebook each year), conservative talk radio’s reach has grown.
Once concentrated in the Milwaukee metropolitan area (where WISN 1130 AM remains an incredibly important voice for conservatives in Wisconsin), you have the great Meg Ellefson in the Wausau market and Regular Joe in Green Bay. In addition, Elon Musk created a free speech space on X, and the growth of podcasts like Megyn Kelly’s and Joe Rogan’s have exposed more people to conservative ideas and Trump without the warped media filter.
6. Jill Stein
Third parties will help Trump. Jill Stein is on the Wisconsin ballot. Democrats succeeded in unfairly kicking the Greens off in 2020 but not in 2024. In 2016, Stein got more than Trump’s margin of victory.
In 2016, the Green Party’s Jill Stein received 31,072 votes in Wisconsin. It arguably cost Hillary Clinton the State of Wisconsin because President Donald Trump won the state with fewer votes than that in 2016 (22,748 votes).
In fact, she may give the pro-Gaza wing another place to go, and there are a lot of them in Wisconsin, a state with pro-Palestinian encampments and an entrenched public university system.
7. The Minnesota Media Market
Tim Walz was a terrible pick for Kamala Harris. Wisconsinites aren’t going to vote for an ideological extremist just because he wears a flannel shirt for photo ops. And this is key: A large swath of northwestern Wisconsin is in the Minnesota media market. When one of the authors of this piece grew up in northwestern Wisconsin, the only newspaper people read was the hometown paper or the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
People in the Minnesota media market get what Walz has done with one-party control in that state, and it hasn’t been pretty. They get his ideological extremism, and they were in close enough proximity to the police precinct burning down to remember Harris pushed a rioters’ bail fund.
8. The Kenosha Riots
The Kenosha riots are still emblazoned in people’s minds in that area of the state, and it’s turned increasingly red, electing a Republican county executive. The Racine/Kenosha axis could offset erosion in the WOW counties (Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee Counties.)
9. Inner City Apathy For Harris
We went to Milwaukee’s inner city to interview random black voters about the election, and the overall trend line we discovered was total voter apathy. People weren’t excited by Trump or Harris, and they weren’t planning to vote. We found the only people in America who just didn’t give a damn. This is worse for Harris because she is not a phenomenon like Barack Obama was, and that’s her base. She doesn’t have his force of personality.
#Wisconsin reader submission: Chris Roepke
"Downtown #Milwaukee zero lines and a lot of empty voting booths" #ElectionDay #breaking pic.twitter.com/Ulv9toC5yd— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) November 5, 2024
This matters because Hillary lost to Trump in Wisconsin in part because turnout in Milwaukee was down just enough in 2016 to stop her from offsetting Trump’s rural gains. Harris seems to desperately know this, which is why they have trotted out Obama and a bunch of celebrity rappers in the final days here, but Cardi B isn’t a big sell to independent or rural voters, and the musical ploy insulted some black voters we know. Hillary ran an urban message too (remember her standing with the “Mothers of the Movement” as cities burned?) How did that work out?
10. The Black & Hispanic Male Vote for Trump
Trump has gained support from a larger number of black and Hispanic voters who are heading to the polls, especially men.
11. Men! (And Brett Favre!)
This is a state of hunters, fishermen, guys who can fix their own cars, folks who work with their hands, and Packers fans. Brett Favre’s endorsement is not insignificant, and he’s been texting voters. In contrast, Harris has given men zero reason to vote for her. The gender gap will be enormous (and contrary to the rhetoric of the left, a lot of women do like Donald Trump. They just tend to be married.)
Harris running around in a pantsuit rambling about Hitler reminds one of Hillary. At times, they almost seem like they’ve morphed into the same person. This doesn’t mean Wisconsin men wouldn’t vote for a female president. Of course, they would. But they’re not going to vote for a far-left, incoherent, and flip-flopping scold who insults them.
12. Polling Error Favoring Trump
Harris has more ways to fail tonight than Trump. She has to take Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and he just needs one (presuming he gets other states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona, which look more certain.) He’s expanded the map, and she’s fighting on many fronts. That matters. When it comes to Wisconsin polling (and MI and PA), all of the polling error needs to go in her direction.
Yet historically, the polls have undercounted Trump. The polls have tightened in his favor, and the betting markets are overwhelmingly predicting Trump. Yes, it’s close, but it’s hard to see a scenario where they’ve undercounted her. In Wisconsin, we all remember the notorious Marquette poll that had Hillary up by six going into election day, and then Trump won it. Marquette has had some outliers again this election season that don’t seem plausible.
13. Other Competitive Races
We have a competitive Senate race that has turned out a lot of voters, we have competitive legislative races (because Democrats nefariously redrew the maps to create them), and we have a competitive congressional race. A lot of money went into these races, and that helped lift other Republicans.
14. Trump’s Appeal to Rural Voters
In 2016, we spoke to rural voters who had never voted before. One logger in Crawford County said he had only voted for two people in his life- Trump and the local sheriff, who was his neighbor. This is still true. They were the “Forgotten Men.” Trump brings out disenfranchised, new voters who haven’t historically voted. We’re a rural state in lots of ways.
15. Our State’s Opposition to Lawfare
In Wisconsin, we have a sense of justice and fair play. Democrats trying to jail their political opponent, bankrupt him, gag him, and tie him up in courtrooms has energized support for Trump here. The assassination attempts have as well.
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