Republicans Still Have a Swing Voter Problem
How the WI Supreme Court election shows the limits of GOP's extremism
Voters went to the polls in Wisconsin Tuesday to decide the next justice on the state Supreme Court. The current Supreme Court in the Badger State has a 4-3 conservative majority. But in a landslide by this swing state’s standards, Wisconsin voters elected liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz by an 11 point margin, helping flip the Court from a 4-3 conservative majority to a 4-3 liberal majority. For the first time in 15 years, liberals won control of the state’s high court. The race attracted a ton of campaign cash and attention from both state and national parties. The nationalization of even local races continues to accelerate.
Three issues loomed large over the race: gerrymandering, the 2024 election, and abortion rights.
Wisconsin is noticeably gerrymandered. It is one of the nation’s true swing states, voting for Donald Trump by less than one percent in 2016 and then voting for Joe Biden by a similar margin in 2020. But the GOP has a supermajority in the state legislature, mostly because of districts drawn to ice out Democrats.
In a state that overall votes 50-50, the state legislature shouldn’t be over sixty percent Republican, even after accounting for Democrats’ geographically disadvantaged coalition. But that just shows how electing a liberal judge signaled discontent with this undemocratic representation.
The 2024 election loomed large as an issue because the State Supreme Court could very well decide to throw out the results of the election. Given GOP efforts to overturn the 2020 election, this was a real concern for many voters.
And then there was the abortion issue. According to CNN, the state’s 1849 ban on nearly all abortions is currently being challenged in court and the law’s fate could end up being decided by the State Supreme Court.
In the end, these issues served to propel the liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz to a decisive victory over her conservative opponent Daniel Kelly. Keep in mind, Kelly had run before in 2020 and lost by a slightly smaller margin. He wasn’t exactly the strongest candidate. I’d argue that the other conservative candidate would’ve done a little better. But not nearly enough to erase an 11 point margin.
And that’s because while crazy or uninspiring candidates can cause a party to lose, it’s the issues at the end that drove this win. Especially when the stakes are so high. This is where the GOP has boxed itself in: by taking positions that may satisfy their base but turn off swing voters and energize the Democratic base.
Protasiewicz ran most of her ads focused on democracy and abortion. With abortion as a national right erased by the Dobbs decision, it became a big issue in elections in states where the right to choose was up for grabs. Wisconsin, with its divided status and a Republican legislature, was prime ground for this issue to resonate.
What the Left/Democrats were able to do from a coalition building standpoint was simultaneously drive up base turnout and also persuade some voters who typically don’t always vote Democratic to vote for Judge Janet.
Dane County produced a 64 point margin for Protasiewicz. Milwaukee County produced a 45 point margin for Protasiewicz. But I think more importantly, the “WOW” counties - the suburban Milwaukee counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington- voted for Kelly by a much smaller margin than Republicans usually amass from these counties.
Ozaukee County went from voting for Mitt Romney in 2012 by thirty percent to voting for Daniel Kelly by only five percent. In Waukesha County, Romney posted a 34 point win; Kelly only won by 16 points. With Democrats running up the score in a fast-growing Dane County and in Milwaukee County, Republicans have to counter those totals by running up the score in the WOW counties in order to have a chance. They did not.
The change in the WOW countless didn’t begin this week. It started under Trump. Even when winning the state in 2016, he did worse in these counties than Mitt Romney did. The suburban trend away from Republicans since the Trump candidacy and presidency is real and it is happening in the Badger State. And the issues that are driving college educated voters from the GOP - the cult of Trump, aversion to protecting our democracy, obsession over culture wars, and a hard right position on abortion- are driving up Democratic base turnout among young people and are making Dane County (home to the University of Wisconsin) even more Democratic.
Trump was able to win in 2016 and keep it close in 2020 though due to his ability to drive up rural and white working class voter turnout, including persuading some of these voters who voted for Barack Obama once or even twice to vote for Trump. These voters don’t tend to be super religious or conservative on every social issue. They were more socially conservative on race and immigration but were pro-choice. Prior to Dobbs, because abortion was not at stake, in my estimation, they voted Republican on the racially polarized issues of crime and immigration. Now with abortion rights at risk, perhaps some of these voters aren’t as solidly Republican. In fact, the biggest swings from the 2020 presidential election to this election in the Democratic/Left direction were not in the suburbs. They were in the more rural Obama-Trump counties in the driftless area in the Southwestern part of the state. That’s absolutely a non-starter for any chances of a close election, much less a GOP win.
Judge Janet made protecting democracy a big part of her ad campaign as well. This drives up turnout among Democratic base voters. Wisconsin Democrats are very much motivated by the GOP’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and draw district maps that unfairly boost the GOP’s seat number in the State Assembly. But 2022 showed that in swing states, it served as a counter to GOP candidates’ arguments on crime and inflation among more persuadable voters. It reminded voters that despite Donald Trump no longer being President, his anti-democratic tendencies still have an iron grip over the Republican Party.
This proved true here. College-educated suburban voters in the Milwaukee suburbs may have shifted more Democratic, but there are a not so insignificant chunk of them that are open to a GOP not in the throes of Donald Trump and the authoritarian tilt of his movement. Daniel Kelly proved in his concession speech that he was an angry poor loser telling his supporters why he did not offer to concede to Protasiewicz. These voters rejected this mentality of grievance and anti-democratic angst.
Pretty clearly, Republicans have a swing voter problem. And with the stances they have taken on abortion, they have managed to accelerate their issues with the college-educated, former Republican voters and lose some of the Obama to Trump voters they gained over the last 7 years.
That is an electoral disaster for the GOP. The Trump connection clearly has poisoned their brand but a right-wing stance on abortion has as well. Voters don’t like their rights being taken away - whether it’s their vote being thrown out by partisan legislators and judges or their right to choose to terminate a pregnancy by these same folks. This is why these are motivating issues when they didn’t use to be. And the GOP seemingly does not have an answer electorally that can win back swing voters but also not anger or depress their radicalized base.