Why western Wisconsin is a focal point in the 2024 presidential election

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Governor Tim Walz is in the midst of making another solo campaign swing through cities like Dallas and Reno today, Vegas and Phoenix tomorrow. He'll land in more familiar territory Friday when he campaigns a second time in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Eau Claire is an important region in the battleground state of Wisconsin. It's not too far away from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and it's visited by the Harris and Trump campaigns multiple times so far. And there may be a few more visits yet to come.

Joining us to explain what is so consequential and unique about a region like Western Wisconsin is Craig Gilbert. He's the former national political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper. He's now a fellow with Marquette University's Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy, Research, and Civic Education. Craig, it's nice to hear your voice again. How have you been?

CRAIG GILBERT: I've been good. It's nice to be with you.

CATHY WURZER: Good. Thank you. I went to school at UW River Falls, so I'm pretty familiar with Western Wisconsin. And I tend to define it as the area between, say, Turtle Lake and Barron down to Fountain City and then east to Eau Claire and Menominee. How do you define Western Wisconsin for your political analysis?

CRAIG GILBERT: Yeah, I just did a little dive into Western Wisconsin, and I defined it basically as the three media markets that touch Minnesota. You've got Eau Claire, La Crosse media market. You've got these two Minnesota media markets that include Wisconsin counties, the Duluth market and the Twin Cities market. And then that takes you almost all the way down the western border of Wisconsin. And then you throw in a few more counties in the far southwestern corner of the state, and you basically get an area that's home to about 1 in 7 Wisconsin voters, pretty rural area, but a very strategic area.

CATHY WURZER: As you say, Western Wisconsin isn't diverse, really, demographically, but it seems like it's a pretty purple area politically. Is that fair to say?

CRAIG GILBERT: Yeah, and there's some nuance here because historically Western Wisconsin has been-- Democrats have been far more competitive in Western Wisconsin and parts of Iowa and Minnesota, too, than they have been with other rural areas, particularly in the Midwest. And that changed a little bit in 2016 and 2020 when some of these rural counties swung against Democrats. But it remains the case that these places are still more purple and more competitive than a lot of rural counties that are basically their demographic counterparts in other parts of the country and including other parts of Wisconsin.

That's kind of just an historic kind of thread to the political culture in these areas. So that makes them attractive to Democrats because they feel like they can actually get somewhere in these rural areas. And it makes it attractive for Republicans because the movement, the political movement, has been on their side.

CATHY WURZER: Do you think that some of that is attributed to, say, the college towns? Superior Wisconsin has UW Superior, obviously, River Falls, Eau Claire, Menominee, down to La Crosse.

CRAIG GILBERT: Yeah, absolutely. So that's a big part of what has kept the bottom from falling out for Democrats in these areas. Certainly, they've been actually not just holding their own but gaining ground in places like La Crosse and Eau Claire. But even if you look at the small towns in Western Wisconsin, some of them are quite red, but a lot of them are purple to blue leaning.

And again, that's not something you would find in central Wisconsin or Northeastern Wisconsin. You would not find a lot of rural counties that are anything but very red. So it's not just the cities. It's not just the college towns. There's also a competitiveness to the small towns in this part of the state that's really intriguing.

CATHY WURZER: You know, some of my friends around Hudson and River Falls complain about getting nothing but Twin Cities news. And of course, yeah, you get a lot of media from the Twin Cities and advertising and that kind of thing from Minnesota. Obviously, Tim Walz is our governor. What are you watching for in terms of any boost he may give to Democrats in Wisconsin, this area of Wisconsin?

CRAIG GILBERT: Yeah. So, I mean, I think these things, like a lot of things we talk about, are really on the margins. But, a close race, a few thousand votes here or there can make a big difference. And so if you look at the two Minnesota media markets that spill over into Wisconsin, Duluth and Twin Cities, they produce-- those Wisconsin counties produced almost a quarter million votes in 2020. So it's less than 10% of the Wisconsin electorate. But-- and it's also an area where, collectively, Donald Trump carried those Minnesota markets by between 10 and 20 points.

But if you think that there's any potential Tim Walz effect, I think this is the place you sort of look for it first, because these people, these voters, are getting Minnesota media and Minnesota advertising. They're going to have a higher level of exposure to Tim Walz. And so I think if the hope for Democrats would be if they can shave a few points off their 2020 deficit in Western Wisconsin, then that could conceivably make a difference in a super close race.

CATHY WURZER: So I'm wondering-- there's a lot of attention around Pennsylvania, obviously, and Georgia. How is Wisconsin looking? Yes, it's a battleground state, but what makes it stand out from the other swing states?

CRAIG GILBERT: I mean, demographically, it stands out because it's basically the most white working class of all the battlegrounds. More than half of Wisconsin voters are non-college white voters. And that's a demographic segment that's gotten a lot of attention. It's sort of considered-- sort of moved in a Republican direction, considered to be sort of Donald Trump's demographic base. But those non-college whites in Wisconsin are not nearly as Republican as non-college whites in a lot of other states.

So that's what's kind of interesting about Wisconsin. If you look at the polling in this cycle, I mean, Wisconsin was the tipping point state, the mathematical tipping point state, in both 2016 and 2020, which means it was right in the middle of the electoral college. In the polling so far this year, it's been maybe the best state for Democrats relative to the other battlegrounds. I'm not sure whether that'll hold up, but it's going to be interesting to see where it lands in relation to Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the southern battlegrounds. I think, right now, the Democrats think their clearest path to victory is in those sort of Great Lakes battlegrounds that historically have been better for them.

CATHY WURZER: Say, how excited are Wisconsin democrats about the top of the ticket? And I asked that. How much ticket splitting is there in Wisconsin? Will voters start at the top and go all the way down in Senate congressional races?

CRAIG GILBERT: Yeah, there's not nearly as much ticket splitting as there used to be, but it hasn't entirely disappeared. I mean, Tammy Baldwin, the democratic senator in Wisconsin, is up for re-election. And in 2018, where she won quite comfortably, kind of dominated that race, she just won a lot of small towns that also voted for republican governor Scott Walker. So she kind of overperformed in places like Western Wisconsin, in rural counties.

I think it's going to be a tighter race for her this time. But when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket, she was consistently outperforming Biden in her own race. And now that Kamala Harris is at the top of the ticket, I think you see these races come closer together. But I think the expectation would be that she'll do a little bit better than Kamala Harris does statewide, particularly in rural areas where she has just been unusually competitive for a Democrat. So there will be some ticket splitting. There may be some ticket splitting in the congressional races. But it's nothing like the ticket splitting we used to see in the '90s and 2000s.

CATHY WURZER: I suspect-- do you-- that we'll see many more visits by the campaigns, in the next-- what is it now? Is it less than 70 days? I lost track.

CRAIG GILBERT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some of your listeners will remember the campaigns from the Clinton years and the Bush years and massive amount of attention by the candidates. They really lived in the upper midwest for long stretches of time. And of course, the difference then was that Iowa and Minnesota were also battlegrounds. So when you came to this region, you got three battlegrounds for the price of one.

Wisconsin is the only one left of those three that's competitive enough to get that level of attention from the candidates. But because there are fewer battlegrounds, you're seeing a lot of activity. You're going to continue to see a lot of activity. It does kind of remind me of those elections in terms of candidates from both sides being in the same place at the same time and coming back endlessly.

CATHY WURZER: And you would know. You covered it all. It's always fun talking to you, Craig. Thank you so very much.

CRAIG GILBERT: Absolutely. It was a pleasure.

CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to Craig Gilbert. He's a fellow with Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education and a political analyst.