GOP majority baked into Wisconsin voting maps
Despite losing Wisconsin’s presidential contest this year, Republicans won more than 60% of the state’s legislative races.
How did that happen?
The answer does not lie with ticketsplitting (voters choosing different parties for different offices).
In fact, almost every state Assembly and state Senate district in Wisconsin voted the same way for its legislative representative as it did for president, an analysis of election returns shows.
Instead, the explanation for the GOP’s legislative dominance is the same as it was in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018: a very Republican-friendly map.
Most legislative districts in Wisconsin are more Republican than the state as a whole.
There are two reasons for this. One is that Democratic voters are disproportionately concentrated in cities and inner suburbs, especially in and around Milwaukee and Madison, meaning the Democratic vote is more highly clustered in fewer districts.
The second and arguably bigger factor is gerrymandering. The very partisan map that Republicans drew in 2011 has ensured large GOP legislative majorities in every election since then, in good years and bad for the party. It has also ensured there are very few competitive districts, period.
When you combine these factors with the fact that far fewer voters split their tickets than did 20 or 30 years ago, the result is that legislative outcomes have rarely been more predictable.
Only four of 99 Assembly races and one of 16 state Senate races were decided by less than 3 points. Only eight Assembly races and one state Senate race were decided by less than 5 points. This occurred in a year when the contest for president was determined by six-tenths of a point.
Big GOP legislative majorities in Wisconsin are baked into the cake (and the map). Republicans this year won almost exactly the same number of legislative seats you would expect them to win based purely on the partisan tilt of each district.
Let’s take a closer look at the defining features of legislative elections in Wisconsin over the past decade through the lens of the 2020 election:
Lack of competition
Republicans won 61 of 99 state Assembly seats and 10 of 16 state Senate seats on the ballot in 2020. Only four of 99 Assembly races and one of 16 state Senate races were decided by less than 3 percentage points. Only eight Assembly races and one state Senate race were decided by less than 5 points.
This occurred in a year when the contest for president was determined by six-tenths of a point. In other words, the state as whole could not be more competitive. Yet 84% of Assembly races were decided by double digits. That’s a testament to not just the power of incumbency but how one-sided in their makeup most districts are.
And that one-sidedness is a byproduct of not just how deeply red or blue so many communities in Wisconsin are, but also a very gerrymandered map. The purpose of the 2011 Republican redistricting plan was to pack as many Democratic voters as possible into as few districts as possible in order to limit the voting power of Democratic voters and maximize the number of GOP-leaning districts.
A lack of competitive seats has been a consistent consequence. In 2018, only five of 99 Assembly races were decided by under 5 points. In 2016, only five were. In 2014, only three were.
Republican advantage
The other main consequence — the map’s GOP tilt — can be measured by looking at how each district votes at the top of the ticket. Despite narrowly losing the statewide vote, Republican Donald Trump carried 62 of 99 Assembly districts and 22 of 33 state Senate districts.
In other words, more than 60% of the state’s legislative districts are more Republican than the state as whole, based on presidential voting. In 2016, 63% of Assembly districts were more Republican than average. In 2012, it was 60%.
This means that in a 50/50 election year when equal numbers of Republican and Democratic voters turn out and independents are split right down the middle, Republicans can be expected to win 60 or more Assembly seats. Put another way, they go into every election cycle with an inherent 20- to 30-seat advantage in the chamber.
And that’s how each of the past three elections has played out in practice. In 2016, 2018 and 2020, only about a point has separated the two parties at the top of the ticket for president or governor. These were essentially 50-50 elections. But the GOP has won 64, 63 and 61 of the 99 Assembly races in these years.
Even in 2012, when Republican Mitt Romney lost the presidential race in Wisconsin by 7 points, Romney carried 56 of 99 Assembly districts and Republicans remained firmly in control of the Legislature.
Republicans have won 46%, 47% and 49% of the vote in the last three presidential elections, yet captured 61%, 65% and 62% of the Assembly seats in those cycles.
Lack of ticket-splitting
Republican legislative majorities aren’t literally guaranteed, of course. Even GOP-leaning districts can elect Democratic lawmakers if enough Republican voters cross over to the other party or split their tickets. But that is not what happens in the current political era, when ticket-splitting and crossover voting have dramatically declined from the levels of two or three decades ago.
And the numbers show that both red and blue districts are overwhelmingly voting for the same party at the legislative level as they are for governor or president.
In 2020, only one Assembly district in the entire state voted Democratic for president but Republican for Assembly. That was the 24th district in the suburbs northwest of Milwaukee. It supported Biden for president by 4 points and Republican Dan Knodl of Germantown for Assembly by 3 points.
Only two Assembly districts split the opposite way, voting Republican for president and Democratic for Assembly. One was the 94th district outside La Crosse, won by Democratic state Rep. Steve Doyle of Onalaska. The other was the 74th district in northern Wisconsin won by Democratic state Rep. Beth Meyers of Bayfield.
That adds up to just three “split districts” in the Assembly. There were none in the state Senate. The closest a Senate district came to splitting its vote was the 8th district in the Milwaukee suburbs, which voted for Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling by almost 9 points and for Trump just one-tenth of a point.
Split districts used to be commonplace in Wisconsin.
In 2004, there were 19 split Assembly districts, meaning they voted for one party for Assembly and the other party for president. In 2010, there were 14, meaning they voted for one party for Assembly and the other party for governor.
But the combination of increasingly partisan voting patterns and more lopsided districts has greatly reduced these split outcomes.
After the last redistricting in 2011, the number of split districts in the Assembly plunged to eight in 2012, three in 2014, five in 2016, four in 2018 and three in 2020.
New election map coming
The 2020 election is the last legislative cycle under the current Republicanfriendly map, drawn when the GOP had total control of the process, with a Republican governor and Legislature.
The next map will be drawn under a Republican Legislature and Democratic governor, meaning it’s expected to be decided in court. As a result, it may not be as heavily skewed toward the GOP as this one.
It will still likely give Republicans the upper hand in the fight for legislative control. That’s because part (but by no means all) of the legislative advantage they enjoy today is due to the state’s underlying political geography.
The fact that there are heavy concentrations of Democratic voters in cities, especially Milwaukee and Madison, means some Democratic votes are “wasted” in district-level elections, clustered in a limited number of districts. Republican voters are more efficiently distributed across the state.
In the Trump era, the urban-rural political gap has widened even further, meaning Republicans may increasingly dominate the rural seats and Democrats may win urban seats by even bigger margins.
Potentially the most consequential changes in how districts are drawn will come in suburban areas, where Republicans have lost much of their historic edge. This is the most competitive turf in the state today.
Some of these suburban districts around the state, especially in metropolitan Milwaukee, aren’t nearly as safe for the GOP as they were when the current lines were drawn in 2011.
These communities were not only a key battleground in the 2020 election, but they will be a key battleground in the redistricting fight to come.