In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin and stunned the nation. The polls had looked so favorable for Clinton for months—so good in fact that when Clinton’s top Wisconsin campaign official requested more resources from national headquarters, she was rebuffed. Clinton never even visited the state in the months leading up to Election Day. Among many things, black voter turnout in Wisconsin declined 19 points as compared to 2012.
I have a piece in The Intercept today about how Democrats are working to avoid that result again in 2020. It certainly won’t be easy. Between 2011 and 2018, union density in Wisconsin went from 13.3 percent of workers down to 8.1 percent. And Wisconsin Republicans held trifecta control over state government during that entire time, too.
While it’s true that before 2016, Wisconsin had never elected a Republican to the White House in over three decades, its 2000 presidential election turned on less than 6,000 votes, and its 2004 contest, by less than 13,000 votes. Trump won his race in 2016 by under 23,000 votes. And in 2018 — when a Democrat finally ousted Scott Walker for Wisconsin governor—they did so by a comparably tight margin of just 29,000 votes.
Last week a poll came out showing Donald Trump trailing a Democrat for president in Wisconsin by just one point. If you’ve made it this far into this email, the main takeaway is this will be an extremely close race, almost certainly. It may be the closest race out of all 50 states, likely decided by just a few thousand votes.
I talked to activists, labor leaders, and party officials to learn how Democrats are trying to eke out that victory in 2020. While the decline of organized labor is certainly no help, progressives also have a few new things working in their favor. And at the very least, nobody is taking Wisconsin for granted again.
Read it here: How Democrats Plan to Win Wisconsin in 2020