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In today’s edition, national political reporter Steve Kornacki explains Donald Trump’s struggles in his home state of Wisconsin. Plus, NBC News has a new report on how the GOP’s push for mail-in voting is running into the same obstacle: ex-Pres.
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3 big obstacles facing Trump in Wisconsin this fall
Analysis by Steve Kornacki
Donald Trump heads to Wisconsin today for a rally to coincide with the presidential election, but his campaign is being billed as the start of a general election effort in one of the key 2024 battlegrounds.
The Badger State is one of three Big Ten states to appeal to Trump, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania. in 2016 after decades of supporting Democrats. All three returned to the Democratic ranks in 2020It blocked Trump’s path to re-election.
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Of the three, Wisconsin may offer Trump his best chance to regain lost ground. Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state was just 20,682 votes (or 0.6%), narrower than both Michigan (154,188 votes) and Pennsylvania (80,555 votes). If Trump can win back Wisconsin, he can reverse tight losses in Arizona (10,457 votes) and Georgia (11,779 votes) to claim the presidency. Those three states would give Trump 272 electoral votes without any other changes to the map.
Trump lost a net 43,430 votes in Wisconsin from 2016 to 2020. The 2020 results reveal three clear obstacles for Trump this year.
Suburbs: Any split in Wisconsin will always call out the “WOW” counties – Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington, D.C., the three largest suburbs outside of Milwaukee, which account for about 13% of all votes cast in the state. All three have deep Republican traditions and have remained red even as similar suburbs nationally have become blue bastions. But after Trump emerged, two of them became noticeably less red:
Had Trump maintained his 2016 support in Waukesha and Ozaukee, his 2020 statewide margin of defeat would have narrowed by just over 10,000 votes. It can’t afford more attrition here this fall and will likely have to increase its margins from 2020 levels.
Gains Trump didn’t keep: Then there are the states anchored by small and medium-sized cities, where Trump made big gains in past GOP appearances in 2016 — and then made important ground in 2020.
Add the ground that Trump surrendered in these five states in 2020 to his reduced margins in Waukesha and Ozaukee, and that’s his statewide margin of defeat and more. In other words, it’s no coincidence that Trump’s inauguration is being held today in Green Bay, Brown County.
Dane County is getting bigger and bluer: The state’s largest city, Milwaukee, remains an important source of votes for Democrats. But their new ace in the hole is Dane County, home of Madison and the University of Wisconsin. Dane has the highest concentration of white voters with a college degree and is full of college students and many high-income areas. It’s also gaining population and getting bluer with every election:
The level of turnout in the last elections in Denmark was also astronomical. It’s hard to imagine Trump winning here, but it’s easy to imagine Democrats winning even bigger margins this fall. This underscores how important it will be for Trump to make gains elsewhere. And here he hopes to have his ace in the hole.
Where Trump won: Trump actually won more votes in 50 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties than he lost overall between the last two presidential elections. A few of these counties are large (Kenosha and Washington), but most are smaller and more rural and working class. And they all have a higher concentration of white voters without a college degree than the statewide average.
Many of them took big swings against Trump and the GOP when he ran in 2016 — and he made modest gains in 2020. Together, they accounted for 42% of all votes cast in the state four years ago. a total net improvement of about 41,000 votes. It hasn’t been enough to offset his regression elsewhere, but Trump may have more juice to squeeze out of those states this fall, and he’ll probably need it if he’s going to turn Wisconsin red again.
Republicans want to push for mail-in voting, but Trump continues to block it
By Natasha Korecki, Matt Dixon, Abigail Brooks and Emma Barnett
When Trump held a rally in Erie County last year, the moment important area In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a top Republican official asked the 11,000 people waiting in line one by one: Would you like to vote by mail?
It didn’t go well.
“I tried to get them a mail-in ballot application and I only got about 300 votes,” said Tom Eddy, chairman of the county Republican Party. “Either one of them said, ‘No, that’s not the right way to vote,’ or ‘Trump doesn’t agree with that,'” he said.
What happened in Erie County is emblematic of the ongoing tussle within the GOP over one of the most fundamental elements of elections: how to vote.
National Republicans have been trying to embrace mail-in and early voting to match the Democrats’ dominance in recent years.
But interviews with nearly 20 Republican officials and voters across the country say there is persistent and sometimes violent resistance to the idea, from Trump on down. The split signals potential danger for the party in the fall if it once again fails to align with the Democratic electoral organization.
It starts from the top. As the leader of the Republican Party, Trump has used his position to blast mail-in voting as a trojan horse for widespread voter fraud without any evidence. In the process, the former president has eroded confidence in a method once widely embraced by many in his party, putting Republicans at a disadvantage against Democrats.
At a February rally in Michigan, Trump bluntly said, “Voting by mail is absolutely corrupt.” In his public speeches, written comments often include a plug for mail-in voting, but Trump has a hard time reading the lines without questioning early voting options.
According to the report, mail-in ballots reached 43 million during the 2020 election cycle, which is facing a pandemic. MIT Electoral Data Science Lab. That number dropped to 31 million during the 2022 midterm elections, when there were no voting restrictions during the pandemic and midterm elections were generally expected to have lower turnout than presidential elections. That was still significantly higher than the 23 million mail-in ballots cast during the 2018 midterm elections.
🗞️ The best stories of the day
- 🦡 Badger State ballot: Voters in the Wisconsin primary will decide Two GOP-backed constitutional amendments this could affect how elections are conducted on the battlefield. Meanwhile, young progressives are trying to express their disapproval of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war by casting a “no-instruction” vote on the ballot Tuesday. More →
- 🚫 Invitation declined: Several Muslim American leaders who voiced opposition to Biden on the Gaza issue declined invitations to White House Ramadan events, forcing the administration to downsize them. More →
- 📱Call Xi Call Xi If you want to reach Xi: Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke for the first time since November, discussing a range of issues including cyber attacks, election interference, drug trafficking and China’s relationship with Russia. More →
- ⚖️ Trump’s tests: Trump He posted a $175 million bond Monday night in New York City to avoid asset seizure in a civil fraud case. And in the New York hush money case, Trump’s partial gag order was expanded after the former president assaulted a judge’s daughter. More →
- ✈️ Trump International Airport? A group of Republicans has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to rename Dulles International Airport in Virginia after Trump. More → ✉️
- Curb your criticism: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger responded to the latest episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which Larry David was arrested for violating state laws regarding serving food and drink to voters at the polls. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Raffensperger wrote a letter apologizing to David for his treatment in prison: “I’m afraid they’re used to bigger stars. This is the TMZ of mugshots.” More →
For now, that’s it from The Politics Desk. If you have feedback – like it or not – send us an email politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
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