In
Racine, Donald Trump's visit this week marked his third trip to Wisconsin this year, and
we will see much more of him with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next month.
But a ride it has been since he first entered the race for president in 2016.
It was at that time we discussed his nation run with UW-Stevens Point Professor of Political
Science, John Blakeman.
We check back in with him now, and nice to see you, Professor.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
So, would you ever have predicted that all that has happened since we last discussed
Donald Trump's campaign in 2016?
No, I would not.
And, you know, I'll give you an example.
When I teach American politics and constitutional law, I always like to emphasize students how
the United States, you know, our democracy and our political systems are stable, and we
peacefully transfer power from one president to another typically every four years or every
eight years.
And that turned out not to necessarily be the case, obviously, with January the 6th.
And so, you know, I now have to talk with students about potential instability in our
political institutions, which certainly comes out of the 2016 election results.
I also have to emphasize the Electoral College a lot more in class than I ever had.
Indeed.
So, of course, Donald Trump won Wisconsin in the presidency in 2016.
But we talked a lot then about how he was leading with how it would be a rigged election.
And clearly, that still figures prominently in his messaging.
Yes, that is absolutely true.
And there's a good percentage of the electorate, you know, somewhere between a quarter and
a third, perhaps, who believe that coming out of the 2020 election, and certainly strong
Trump supporters almost absolutely believe that that's a new development, you know, and
how we approach, teach, and think about American politics, American elections.
There's always been just a tinge of fraud for a couple of hundred years, of course, but
not on this scale.
And the fact that so many federal and state judges dealt with different cases concerning
the 2020 election, and it still resonates so strongly against a good percentage of people
within the electorate, just strikes me as completely bizarre, you know, and it's something
that political scientists are studying.
But no one is really able to fully explain why this, the big lie, as it's called, has
become so entrenched in a part of the electorate.
In Racine this week, he continued to say that he did a lot better in Wisconsin in 2020 than
in 2016.
He did not.
He lost to Joe Biden.
Do voters just chalk this and other kind of fact challenged comments to Trump being Trump?
And does that matter?
Well, a part of it is, yes, Trump being Trump, and he's just a different type of political
candidate.
I know that doesn't help people necessarily understand it.
But there's really good qualitative research coming out now based on in-depth interviews
with a wide range of voters and some researchers, you know, there's a really good Republican
consultant who she does focus groups and really tries to hone in on Trump supporters and why
they tend to believe a lot of the lies that he espouses.
For instance, you know, inflation is over 50%, or the United States is the main financial
supporter of NATO, neither of those are true.
But for a lot of really strong Trump supporters, the truthfulness doesn't necessarily matter.
For them, what matters is he's sort of giving it back to political elites.
He's sort of putting them in the hot speed.
He's embarrassing them.
And that's what really hardcore Trump supporters like.
It's, the truthfulness doesn't matter.
It's the fact that he's going after people who they think have an outsides control over
the political system.
The other, one other thing that we spoke about together in 2016 was rural rage with immigration
deleting issue there.
How has that changed over these past two cycles?
I think over the past two election cycles, it's become much more entrenched in rural areas.
I mean, Pew polling and I think PRI both show that over 60% of rural voters typically rank
immigration as their pop one or two national issues that they focus on.
Whereas in urban and suburban areas, immigration is going to be down at three, four, five.
So for whatever reason, immigration really, really matters for rural voters.
And that's a tricky one to explain it as well, partly because rural voters are typically
what we call place bound.
They don't travel out of their areas as much as suburban or urban voters do.
They don't encounter immigrants as much as urban or suburban voters, and it could just
be the place boundedness, the fact that they don't interact with non-citizens, migrant
workers so much immigrants.
That probably is one of the main reasons that affects their views on immigration.
But you know, support for building Trump's wall on the southern border is much, much
stronger in rural areas than it is in urban and suburban areas.
And again, that's one of the, it's sort of an oddity, especially in rural areas that
are far removed from the southern border, like Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas.
You know, Minnesota and the Dakotas, North Dakota obviously share an international border,
but the immigration problems in the North are not nearly as severe and dramatic as in
the South.
So yeah, and one other thing about rural voters too is they have become much more homogenous
nationally, which means if you go back 20 years, rural voters in Wisconsin would view
immigration differently than say in Ohio or Iowa or definitely Texas.
But by 2020, and now 2024, it's become quite clear with public opinion polling that rural
voters, no matter where they are in the United States, tend to have very, very similar views
about immigration policy.
Interesting.
Well, when we speak again in eight years, I hope it's sooner, but what do you think we
will have seen then?
I hate to predict.
I will be optimistic.
I think the Republican Party will pack back a little bit towards the center right where
it historically is.
The Trump faction within the Republican Party won't be nearly as strong.
Eight years from now, there's probably got to be a successor to Donald Trump in the Republican
Party.
And that successor, who knows who it will be, but I will predict that our politics will
tack back towards the center and become a little more even keel.
All right.
We don't hold me to that though.
Oh, I'm going to.
Professor John Blake, thanks very much.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
That was great.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you.
Really.
And a lot of good information.
Yeah.
So eight years from now, I'll probably be retired.
But give me a call anyway.
All right.
I will.
You'll still be watching.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, Professor, thanks again.
All right.
Enjoy the summer.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Anytime.
Thank you.
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