Demographic divide between red and blue
Gender, age among stark differences when it comes to Democrats, Republicans in Wisconsin
As the two parties hold dueling conventions in the coming days, they will be mostly appealing to vastly different coalitions of voters.
Wisconsin is a stark picture of the demographic divide between red and blue America.
Few of those dividing lines are more striking than gender.
In polling this year by the Marquette Law School, women make up less than half of self-identified Republican voters in Wisconsin.
But they account for two-thirds of self-identified Democrats. In other words, women outnumber men by 2to-1 among the nearly one-third of registered Wisconsin voters who align themselves with the Democratic Party.
“I was stunned that it was that high myself,” said Charles Franklin, the Marquette Law School pollster who provided the data for this story. “That is kind of an eye-popping number.”
The parties differ demographically in major ways, many of them very familiar by now: race, religion, geography, age, education.
But the Wisconsin numbers don’t entirely fit the national stereotypes.
Take older voters, who are generally thought of as part of the GOP base.
In Wisconsin, however, seniors have consistently identified more as Democrats than Republicans and favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
As a result, people 60 and older make up a bigger share of Democratic voters (38%) than they do of Republican voters (33%), while the opposite is true of voters in their 40s and 50s.
The numbers also remind us that even “valid” stereotypes come with lots of exceptions.
The state’s Republican electorate includes disproportionate numbers of frequent churchgoers, blue-collar white men and rural voters. No surprises there.
But there are lots of rural voters, blue-collar white men and frequent churchgoers in the Democratic Party, too.
The state’s Democratic electorate includes disproportionate numbers of voters under 30, college-educated women and city dwellers. No surprises there.
But there are lots of voters under 30, college-educated women and city dwellers in the Republican Party, too.
A breakdown of the Dems and GOP in Wisconsin
What follows is a closer look at the makeup of the two major parties in the key battleground state of Wisconsin in the presidential election year of 2020.
For this story, pollster Franklin combined the six Wisconsin surveys he has conducted from January through August of this year and provided a demographic comparison of two groups: registered voters who identify as Republicans (30% of the 5,030 voters in this combined sample) and voters who identify as Democrats (29% of the sample).
Because the focus here is on each party’s core voters, this analysis leaves out self-identified independent voters, many of whom lean toward one party or the other. (These independent voters, broadly defined, make up about 40% of the Wisconsin electorate).
Gender. The gender gap between the parties has grown remarkably large. In 2012, the first year of the Marquette poll, Republicans were almost evenly divided between men (51% of GOP voters) and women (49%). Today, that Republican breakdown is 53% men and 47% women. And Democrats have become more predominantly female. In 2012, women made up just under 62% of Wisconsin Democrats, men just over 38%. Now, that breakdown among Democrats is 66% women and 34% men.
Race. Wisconsin is a predominantly white state, so the difference in racial composition between the two parties is not as dramatic as it is nationally. But it is still significant. Republican voters are 92% white; Democrats are 79% white. Blacks make up 11% of Democrats, but just 1% of GOP voters. Hispanics make up just over 5% of Democratic voters and 2.5% of GOP voters.
Whites by education. Education is a growing dividing line among white voters. College-educated whites are trending Democratic nationally and non-college whites are trending Republican. In the relatively blue-collar state of Wisconsin, non-college whites make up a large majority of Republicans (62%) but a minority of Democrats (43%). Men account for almost that entire gap. Non-college white men make up 32% of Republicans but just 14% of Democrats (the two parties have roughly equal proportions of non-college white women). On the other hand, women with college degrees comprise almost a quarter of Democrats (23%) but just 13% of GOP voters.
Religion. Born-again Christians make up 27% of Republicans but just 13% of Democrats. Frequent churchgoers are a much bigger part of the GOP electorate (41%) than the Democratic electorate (24%). By the same token, very few Republican voters say they have no religion (around 7%) compared to 24% of Democrats. This is one of the biggest gaps between the parties.
Geography. Another divide involves where Democrats and Republicans live. The Marquette poll asks people to subjectively describe their communities as urban, suburban or rural. More than a third of Democrats locate themselves as urban compared to one-fifth of Republicans. More than 40% of Republicans locate themselves as rural compared to 29% of Democrats. Almost identical shares of Democrats and Republicans identify as suburban.
These differences are also reflected on the Wisconsin map.
Roughly 36% of Democrats live in either the city of Milwaukee or the Madison media market – the biggest, bluest parts of Wisconsin. But only 16% of Republicans do.
More than 60% Republicans live in one of two big regions: the Green Bay media market or the suburbs, exurbs and small towns of southeastern Wisconsin. That compares to 43% of Democrats.
More than one in three GOP voters live in the two congressional districts represented by Republicans Jim Sensenbrenner and Glenn Grothman, compared to about one in five Democrats.
More than one in three Democrats live in the two congressional districts represented by Democrats Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan, compared to just one in seven Republicans.
It may surprise some people to learn that northern and western Wisconsin (the combined areas of the state outside the Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay media markets) make up a similar portion of each party’s voters – a little over 20%. That’s because these regions include some very red places (much of central and northern Wisconsin) and some very blue ones (cities such as La Crosse, Eau Claire, Stevens Point and Superior).
All these demographic differences reinforce and amplify the political differences between the Democratic and Republican “tribes” in Wisconsin.
But they also pose challenges to each party, and to the demographic minorities within each party — the many voters who don’t fit the partisan mold or prevailing majorities on their side of the party divide.
“How does the Democratic Party recognize its rural voters and speak for them? How does the Republican Party speak for urban voters?” Franklin said. “These are big challenges when no party is 100 percent homogeneous but may amplify the voices of majorities (within that party) and diminish the voice of minorities.”