By james art 
What Wisconsin voters should watch out for in the Nov. 5 election
Veteran political reporter Craig Gilbert tells us what to look for as Wisconsinites vote in the Nov. 5 election.
If you’ve been following the fierce battle for Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, you may have heard that there is a county in that state that has voted for the presidential winner seven times in a row (Door).
And another who has done it four times in a row (Sauk).
Door and Sauk are getting a lot of attention these days as election “pillars.”
And they are interesting, revealing places.
But I doubt they tell us more about who will win Wisconsin than many other districts, and they’re not ones I look to as barometers of the November vote.
why not
The answer has to do with what makes a seat the lead in a 50/50 state like Wisconsin in 2024.
Is this his voting history?
Is it equally divided, like the country as a whole?
Is it demographically representative of the state’s electorate?
Does it represent the most decisive voting trends in the state?
Is it so large that it is most likely to affect the outcome?
The classic image is one that applies to tiny Door counties in the northeast and Sauk counties in the southwest: swinging purple seats riding a presidential winning streak.
These are only two of Wisconsin’s 72 counties that voted for the previous two presidential winners, Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
that’s right No other county in Wisconsin has voted a winner even twice in a row.
But does that really mean that as Dorr and Sauk go, so goes Wisconsin?
No county is a demographic microcosm of the state. They have no real-sized cities. They do not have large metropolitan suburbs.
Rural Sauk County, northwest of Madison, has a population that is whiter and more blue-collar than that of the state as a whole (which is whiter and more blue-collar than other battleground states).
Door County, which occupies the peninsula between Green Bay and Lake Michigan, is economically diverse, but its electorate is whiter and significantly older than the statewide electorate. It is also a popular vacation destination known for attracting many people from Illinois. It’s a beautiful part of Wisconsin, but it’s not “present.”
Even the difference these two counties have in voting for so many presidential winners is a bit arbitrary. Door’s streak of endorsing the winner seven times in a row shrinks to four if you define Wisconsin “commentary” as voting for the candidate who wins Wisconsin, not the nation.
And it boils down to just one election if you define a gerrymandered district as voting for the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner of the Electoral College vote.
Sauk has voted for the winner in Wisconsin eight straight elections. But these guiding lines rest on the barest of borders. Sauk voted for Trump in 2016 by 109 votes. Door voted for Biden in 2020 by just 292 votes.
Finally, let’s consider how Wisconsin’s “favorable counties” fared four years ago.
Entering this election, seven Wisconsin counties had voted for the presidential winner in each of the seven previous elections dating back to 1992: Marquette, Forrest, Lincoln, Racine, Sawyer, Juneau and Richland.
What was the estimated value of these counties in 2020? Zero. All seven voted for state and national loser Trump. There has been enough redistricting over the past decade to make a district’s voting history prior to 2016 a highly questionable predictive metric.
I think a lot of journalists who flock to these places understand that bell etiquette is kind of weak. We visit them because these places illustrate what it’s like for voters to live in a 50/50 political environment. And because their voting stories lend more resonance to our “battlefield” stories. (I admit to doing my share of bell tower stories over the years, making multiple trips to Richland, Juneau, and Sauk).
But are there places that have more convincing claims to be edifying?
My list will begin with the counties that embody the critical voting trends that shape our elections. And these places get a lot of attention too.
In 2020, the most important voting trend in Wisconsin was the Democratic surge in the suburbs that turned the state from red to blue.
The decisive vote swings occurred in the blue suburbs of Madison (Dane County) and the red, blue and purple suburbs of Milwaukee (Milwaukee, Waukesha and Ozaukee counties).
These counties were the most reliable election barometers in 2020.
Then again, they weren’t the best barometers in 2016. Democrats made gains in Dane, Waukesha and Ozaukee that year. But that didn’t matter because the state’s smaller, more rural counties in western, northern and central Wisconsin swung so hard for Trump that he became the first Republican to win the state since 1984.
In short, the most important campaign signals in the last two presidential elections have come from completely different parts of Wisconsin.
And that is the main conundrum of 2024. This state, like many states, is not moving in concert politically. Some parts of Wisconsin are getting redder. Some have become bluer.
If you focus on the first group of counties, you might think that former President Trump will win this state.
If you focus on the latter, you might think Vice President Kamala Harris will win.
Even if we can detect the political trend lines in these places, we do not know which trend lines and which places will prove decisive.
So, my head will be on a swivel election night.
I’ll be looking at the purplest metro area in the state, Green Bay-Appleton.
But I’ll also watch very very red and very blue places to see if they get redder or bluer. It’s not about who wins these lopsided districts, it’s about how big the margins are.
I will be watching to see if the Democrats stop their erosion in the rural West and North.
I’ll be watching to see if the Republicans stop their erosion in the Milwaukee suburbs.
I’ll be watching to see if the Democratic vote margin in the state’s second-largest and fastest-growing county, Dane, widens by another 20,000 or 30,000 votes, as it has in nearly every presidential election for decades.
I’ll be watching to see if Republicans make inroads in Democratic cities with black and working-class white voters, from Milwaukee to Racine and Janesville.
I’ll be particularly interested in whether Trump’s performance improves or declines in the densely populated counties that were a huge problem for him in 2020. Of the 15 Wisconsin counties that generated the most votes, Trump’s point margin worsened in 13 compared with 2016 and remained the same in one and improved in one (Kenosha).
Finally, because I’m a fan of election trivia, I’ll also take a look at Door and Sauk, the only two counties that have voted for the Wisconsin and Electoral College winner of every Trump election so far.
It will be fitting in our 50/50 era if no Wisconsin county can make that claim after this election is over.
Then we might have to bury the whole bell idea.