Joe Biden for months has held a steady polling lead of about 5 or 6 percentage points in Wisconsin. But after Hillary Clinton blew it in the state in 2016 — helping swing the race to Trump — the lead was never enough to put Democrats at ease.
Until recently. A confluence of events over the past month — all seeming to favor Democrats — has shifted the dynamic in this Rust Belt battleground.
Wisconsin plunged into its worst bout with Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, reminding voters of the uneven response from the Trump administration as well as the president’s early attempts to dismiss the severity of the virus. A Green Party candidate was not allowed on the ballot — erasing the prospect of a third-party siphoning of votes that contributed to Clinton’s razor-thin defeat. And there are increasing signs that key constituencies that Donald Trump needs to defeat Biden, including suburban and swing voters, are moving away from him.
“I’d be surprised if Joe Biden loses Wisconsin,” says Sachin Chheda, a Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist. “All of the data tell us Republicans are seeing declining margins in the suburbs. He’s changed the math around suburban women. He has to keep the independents he had in 2016 to win. I think he’s losing them, not winning them.”
Republicans scoff at recent polling, noting Trump was also pegged to lose Wisconsin in 2016 before pulling off a surprise victory by fewer than 23,000 votes. But data show voters have more hardened views of the candidates this time around, suggesting that Biden’s steady lead isn’t off base.
Four years ago, undecided voters in Wisconsin broke hard for Trump late in the race. Today, there are half as many persuadable voters that there were at this point in 2016, said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School poll. Back then, nearly 20 percent of Wisconsin voters said they were undecided or that they would vote for a third party candidate. Now, that same cohort of voters stands at 9 percent, meaning there is less likely to be wild fluctuation on Nov. 3, Franklin said.
Republicans feel confident it’s still a tight race. On Thursday, a federal appeals court dealt a blow to Democrats by denying their request that mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day be counted, even if they are received up to six days after the election. The ruling provides an advantage for Republicans who have grossly lagged Democrats in absentee ballot drives.
They’re so far behind in absentee balloting that the Trump campaign recently sent texts to Wisconsin voters from Trump family members urging absentee voting — even as the president himself has undermined the process with his statements against mail-in voting. The state party has also made phone calls urging absentee voting.
Wisconsin isn’t likely to have full results on Election Day, since the state is not allowed to begin counting absentee ballots until then.
While there’s much discussion about how much Trump can drive up margins in the so-called WOW counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington, the suburban Milwaukee counties that provide a treasure trove of Republican votes — state GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt said the more telling battleground will be a trio of counties in the northeastern part of the state.
Trump won Brown (Green Bay), Outagamie (Appleton) and Winnebago (Oshkosh) counties, or the so-called BOW counties in 2016, but Hitt said the party is working a ground game to further drive up turnout in this area.
He expects Trump will again dominate the rural counties that he won in northern Wisconsin in 2016.
“They’re glowing bright red,” Hitt said of the rural counties. “We really have no concerns that the rural vote is going to turn out for the president.”
Yet that same region, with Green Bay as the epicenter, has been thrust into crisis, experiencing the steepest rise in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. Brown County medical officials wrote an open letter saying their systems were overwhelmed. Shortly afterwards, the Green Bay Packers announced they would indefinitely place a hold on hosting fans at legendary Lambeau Field. The Green Bay area has the highest coronavirus infection rate of any media market in the NFL.
The spike in cases isn’t limited to one place. Wisconsin just saw its highest daily case count at 3,000 and the death rate spiked 187 percent over a 14-day period. Last week, the state issued a new order limiting public gatherings and announced it would open a field hospital on state fairgrounds to handle overflow from hospitals hurtling toward capacity.
This is all bad news for Trump. An Ipsos/Reuters poll released last week showed that the coronavirus was top of mind for Wisconsin voters.
“More and more Wisconsinites are experiencing the impact of this virus in their own lives and voters who go into polling places, between now and November 3, thinking about coronavirus, are going to leave having voted for change,” said state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “Republicans’ refusal to support common sense, science-based measures to protect the public's health are torpedoing Trump's chances and putting at risk their own chances for reelection in districts across the state.”
Republicans, who dominate both chambers of the state legislature, have come under fire for blocking efforts by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to contain the spread of the virus. They’ve advocated overturning a mask mandate, forced an in-person primary election during an early peak of the pandemic in April, and won a repeal of a stay-at-home order.
Evers has also faced blowback — including from within his own party — over his unsuccessful clashes with Republicans over implementing safety measures. Still, for months polls have shown voters give the governor high marks over how he’s handled Covid. His overall numbers, however, did drop in the wake of riots in Kenosha amid criticism he did not do enough to tamp down violence that broke out following the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.
Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran George W. Bush's 2004 winning reelection campaign in Wisconsin, conceded the turbulence confronting Trump but pointed to the depth of support among Trump’s voters, arguing they would stick with him regardless.
“In the 25 years I’ve been working on politics in Wisconsin, I have never seen the kind of loyalty to a candidate that Donald Trump has from his supporters,” Graul said.
That level of commitment is critical in a deeply polarized state where the presidential contest will come down to turnout.
“I don’t think there are a lot of persuadable people out there. It’s more about persuading people to vote,” Graul said. “That is the challenge the campaigns are going to have. Which team executes their ground game the best? The Republicans in Wisconsin have a pretty good track record over the last 12 years.”
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