Wisconsin: The Who do you Hate More State?

        It’s easy to make too much of the idea that this election is going to be decided between two historically and widely disliked candidates.   But this description does ring true in Wisconsin. Voters there genuinely do not like either of the candidates.

 Wisconsin provides a very interesting data set from the primary in a way that other states don’t. All of the states we have looked at so far have been closed primary states (Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina).  What that means is that while primary data can be somewhat helpful, the doors were also shut on many potential voters whose intentions we wish to know.  In closed primary states, voters not registered with a major party can’t vote, and if a Democrat or Republican voter was attracted to a candidate from the other party it was often too late for her to vote for the candidate she now preferred.   

Wisconsin, however, has no such rule, and as a consequence it provides us with an excellent sample of what the Electorate will look like.  Slightly more than 3 million people from Wisconsin voted in the 2012 Presidential election, and more than 2.1 million voted in the 2016 Presidential primary. In many ways Wisconsin was the largest defeat in the election cycle for both Trump and Clinton. It was stand alone day with nothing good to report for either one of them.  When putting aside caucuses and just looking at primaries, it was Hillary Clinton’s 5^th worst state and 3^rd worst outside of Sanders home New England region. (West Virginia and Oregon were the other two and both came long after the race was over.)  On the Republican side it was Trump’s third worst state. (Texas (Cruz’s home state) and Idaho were worse, but since they were on days where Trump won a lot they were easily forgotten.)  However, what is interesting is that looking at these results in total gives us a rough idea of each candidate’s various advantages and of why Trump confronts a significant mathematical challenge to do more than make it competitive.   Obama beat Romney here in 2012 by 213,019 votes out of 3,068,434.  The 2016 primary saw 2,113544 votes cast. So the primary is a decent cross-section of the entire electorate, and we can meaningfully begin the process of talking about the entire electorate by walking through the primary.

 Hillary Clinton received 46,393 more votes than Donald Trump in the Wisconsin primary. As a reminder no one in Wisconsin was barred from voting for either them, even by a voter registration deadline because of Wisconsin’s same day voter registration laws. (Voter ID was an issue but has been softened for the general, which likely helps Clinton)  While this may not seem like a large number of votes, it was more than four times Kerry’s margin over Bush in 2004, and more than six times Gore’s margin over Bush in 2000. So it is not nothing. This brings us relatively quickly to the supporters of Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders actually beat Ted Cruz in vote total in Wisconsin by 36,807 votes. Again not a small total but let’s give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume that the Sanders and Cruz votes merely cancel each other out.   Supporters of these four candidates accounted for 90% of all primary votes and about 63% of all votes cast in the 2012 Presidential race.  So our analysis so far has Clinton leading Trump by the same 46,393 by which she beat Trump on primary day.   

It’s the remaining roughly 182,000 primary votes that are more of an enigma. They are 85 % John Kasich votes, 13% votes for other Republicans on the ballot and 2% for Democrats who were not Sanders or Clinton.  This is a group in which Trump desperately needs to make up ground, but one in which he may struggle. The Kasich voters, based on all of the demographic information we have, are a serious problem for Donald Trump.  This is likely even more so in Wisconsin where Kasich support was some of his weakest in the North.  Voters there realized that a vote for Kasich might aid Trump and many people voted for the more conservative Cruz, even perhaps against their natural inclinations. So the Kasich voters here might be true moderates. More than 2/3^rd of Kasich voters listed “scared” as their reaction to Donald Trump winning as opposed to excited, optimistic or concerned.  Scared Kasich voters, who still could not bring themselves to vote for Cruz seem like a tough demographic for Trump. What is amazing is Trump will almost certainly win this group of voters overall.  The question that remains is will it be by enough to erase Clinton’s lead?   Trump needs to win this group with about 63% to erase Clinton’s lead.  Anything less and the world looks very cold for Mr. Trump in Wisconsin; however given partisan loyalty he may just be able to do better.   Let’s give him 80% (basically amounts to everyone who wasn’t scared and 2/3rds of the scared) just for the sake of argument. This would leap him ahead by about 63,000 votes.  For him, it is a start.  

But this is where things become even more difficult for Mr. Trump.   There still remains a pool of roughly 950,000 voters who limit voting to presidential years.  This group voted for Barack Obama by about a 2-1 margin.  Let’s be kind to Mr. Trump with our math.  We can assume that instead of going to Obama 627,000 to 323,000, these 950,000 voters are not the same group from 2012 to 2016.  Some of the 950,000 from 2012 may have voted for Obama last time but voted in the R primary this time.  So let’s drop the margin to 570,000 to 380,000. Let’s also assume Democratic demoralization, so instead of a pool of 950,000 there are only 700,00 and with the same margin. That would net Hillary Clinton 140,000 votes and a relatively easy victory, even factoring in Trump’s prior 63,000 lead.  Even if you cut the available pool down to 450,000 that would still net Clinton a 90,000 margin from this group.  Netting this against the Trump lead produces a Clinton 27,000 vote margin. It’s not much for comfort, but it is also not nothing.   Reviewing these figures, it would seem the major potential source of improvement for Trump might be in the Sanders/Cruz exchange, particularly with more 3^rd party bleeding from among the Sanders voters than among the Cruz voters (even though 55% of Cruz voters were also scared of Trump).  But hoping for such an advantage seems very risky for Trump.  This may be why the Clinton campaign, despite close polls, has not gone up on television in Wisconsin. 

We would be remiss if we did not also provide a little bit of county level flavor, which these posts have been keen on. When looking at a county level, we quickly see that Trump’s problems stem in particular from the three most Republican counties in the state.  These three counties (Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha) have been the three most Republican counties in each of the last four Presidential elections. They are the heart of Red Wisconsin and contain all the Milwaukee suburbs. (Unlike other swing state suburbs, they have not budged in their redness one bit). They were also far and away Donald Trump’s worst counties in Wisconsin. He averaged about 23% in them when he received 35% statewide.  He got about 38% in the rest of Wisconsin. It was these counties which dragged him down. 

What is particularly interesting is that, outside of Trump’s two worst primary states (Texas because of Cruz and Idaho because of Latter Day Saints), he only got less than 25% of the vote in 18 counties total across all states in all primaries. Three of them were the Ruby Red Three in Wisconsin. Known collectively as the WOW counties. These counties make up the very base of the Republican Party in Wisconsin. The provided Mitt Romney with a 132,536 vote margin.  Since Obama’s 213,109 margin is what Trump must make up, bleeding anywhere further is dangerous for him, yet he does look likely to bleed at least a little in the WOW counties. (Seeing him winning them by only 100,000 would not be a shock.) Otherwise   Obama saw gains over Kerry in almost every county in the state, and seeing bleeding back toward the Kerry-Bush number is possible. Turnout might also be down, but Kerry still won so you need to see deeper bleeding than Kerry faced and likely a lot of it to make up for WOW problems. 

 Northwest Wisconsin is showing an albeit minor trend back toward Republicans, but the Democratic gains in the Counties around Dane (Madison), such as Columbia, Sauk, Richland, Green, and Iowa seem to make up for any weakness in the Northwest.  It should be noted that Western Wisconsin, once you get west of the Dane County area, was Hillary Clinton’s worst region in the primary. Democratic strongholds like La Crosse (Obama 58% in 12) and Eau Claire (56% in 12) are places of particular concern for HRC.  However Trump’s weakness in the WOW counties likely negates any strength he can pull here. The WOW counties also have far more votes: 374,744 against 118,268 for LaCrosse and Eau Claire combined.  The gap would remain even if you were willing to add in more Western Wisconsin Counties.  Basically so long as the Dane Region and Milwaukee proper stay true to form and there is bleeding in the WOW’s, there is not much a Republican can do to win Wisconsin. Trump is not out of it here, and it may even be that this is a state in which his odds are slightly better even than in Pennsylvania.  But getting 2/3^rd up the hill is not the same as getting all the way up the hill. We don’t quite see how Trump gets all the way up the hill here and obviously neither does the Clinton campaign.