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Wisconsin's place in national politics is described as a battleground, a tipping point, a swing state.
But how did Wisconsin get to be so key nationally?
Here in that reporter Steven Potter explores the history of Wisconsin politics to understand how we got to this point
and what kind of attention we can expect as we narrow in on the November election.
And I promise we will make Wisconsin great again. We're gonna make it.
The path to the White House goes through Wisconsin.
No one can deny Wisconsin's significance when it comes to national politics, and especially this year's race for President.
Wisconsin is incredibly important as it has been for the last few election cycles.
It is a swing state in the sense that it could go either Republican or it could go Democrat.
And our electorate is about evenly divided.
Jonathan Kesparek is a professor of history at UW-Milwaukee's Waukesha campus, where he's been a political expert for 20 years.
He says one thing keeping Wisconsin in the national spotlight is that it's a microcosm and a mirror of American voting trends.
And like the national picture, Wisconsin is pretty evenly divided.
A lot of the rural areas are red. So if you look at a map broken down by counties, there's a lot of red, but not a lot of voters.
Whereas there's a little bit about a blue and a lot of voters, but it sort of equals out.
But this evenly matched electorate of Democrats and Republicans also means that Wisconsin has bounced back and forth between the two parties
in statewide races over the years.
In 2008 Wisconsin voted for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
But then in 2010 the state elected Republican Scott Walker as governor and Republican Ron Johnson as U.S. Senator.
In 2012 Wisconsin went for Obama again, while also electing Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.
In 2014 Scott Walker won again as governor.
Then in 2016 Wisconsin chose Republican Donald Trump as president, only to turn around and elect Democratic Governor Tony Evers in 2018.
And in 2020 Wisconsin helped Democrat Joe Biden win the White House.
But then in 2022 the state split the ticket, electing both Democratic Governor Tony Evers and Republican Senator Ron Johnson again in the same statewide election.
All of this has led Wisconsin to be known not only as unpredictable, but also very, very purple.
It is confusing. We have the oddest pair of senators I think in the country.
Our behavior has absolutely baffling to national pundits.
They're never quite sure what to make of us because of things like electing Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.
Cosparics, as is back and forth, means that voters here prioritize issues more than political parties.
Wisconsin voters, it's often very basic bread and butter issues.
And they are concerned about the economy, they are concerned about education, they are concerned about health care.
So they're things that I don't think either party really has a lock on.
Ultimately that means it's up to the campaigns to prove their candidates are worth a trip to the polls on election day.
That's really the strategy is we have to turn out more of our voters than they do of theirs.
I think it's going to continue to be close.
We've been close since 2000, I think we're going to remain close.
It really is going to continue to come down to attractive candidates who can generate a lot of enthusiasm and really get voters excited to vote.
I think we're going to see an awful lot of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump over the next few weeks.
They're going to be here a lot.
Stephen Potter joins us now from Chicago where he'll be part of the here and now political team covering the Democratic National Convention next week.
Hi, Steve.
Hi, Frederica.
So how will Wisconsin play a part there at the DNC?
So convention officials are still being pretty tight-lipped as to who will take the stage at the DNC next week.
Of Wisconsin elected officials, it could perhaps be Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers or maybe U.S. House of Representatives member Gwen Moore.
Most likely, however, it would be U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Yeah, so harkening back to your story that we just aired, this is going to be kind of a hold on to your hats campaign moving toward November, given how very, very purple we are.
And I would imagine that at the convention, people will be paying a lot of attention to Wisconsin.
But even in the midst of the convention next week, Kamala Harris is reprising her swing state blitz.
Yeah, absolutely.
After campaigning this weekend in another battleground state of Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz will be traveling to Milwaukee for a rally at Tuesday at the Pfizer Forum, which is exactly where the Republican National Convention was held just last month.
This is another example of how significant Wisconsin is to have the Democratic presidential nominee traveling to Wisconsin during the Democratic National Convention.
Yeah, I've never ever heard of that.
We should mention the GOP VP nominee J.D. Vance spoke in Milwaukee today.
So, as you say, Wisconsin, super important here.
We will be looking for your reporting next week from the DNC.
Thank you, Steve.
Thank you.
It was good.
I jumped ahead to the thing because those first...
Cut a whole question.
Yeah, because they were both the same.
The big names of the Wisconsin Democratic delegation, you named Moore and Evers and Baldwin, right?