The Myth of “Leading” Counties in Presidential Elections

Craig Gilbert
| Special to the Journal Sentinel

If you're following the bitter battle for Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes, you may have heard that there's a county in that state that has voted for the presidential winner (door) seven times in a row.

And another who did it four times in a row (Sauk).

Door and Sauk are enjoying a lot of attention these days as election “leaders.”

And they are interesting, insightful places.

But I doubt they tell us more about who will win Wisconsin than many other districts, and they are not the ones I view as barometers for the November vote.

Why not?

The answer depends on what makes a place in a 50/50 state like Wisconsin a deciding vote in 2024.

Is it because of voting history?

Is it evenly divided, like the state as a whole?

Is it demographically representative of the state's electorate?

Is it representative of the state's most crucial voting trends?

Is it so large that it is the place most likely to influence the outcome?

The classic perception applies to the small counties of Door in the northeast and Sauk in the southwest: swinging, purple places riding a winning streak in the presidential election.

These happen to be the ones only two of Wisconsin's 72 counties that voted for the last two presidential winners, Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

That's right. No other county in Wisconsin has voted for the winner even twice in a row.

But does that really mean Wisconsin is going the same way as Door and Sauk?

Neither county is a demographic microcosm of the state. They don't have cities of any real size. They don't have big suburbs.

In rural Sauk County, northwest of Madison, the population is whiter and more blue-collar than the state as a whole (which is whiter and more blue-collar than other battleground states).

Door County, located on the peninsula between Green Bay and Lake Michigan, is economically diverse, but its electorate is whiter and significantly older than the statewide electorate. It is also a popular vacation destination that attracts many people from Illinois. It's a beautiful part of Wisconsin, but not a “representative” one.

Even the difference between these two counties in voting for so many presidential winners is a little arbitrary. Door's streak of endorsing the winner seven times in a row shrinks to four if one defines a Wisconsin “leader” as voting for the candidate who wins Wisconsin, rather than for the nation.

And it shrinks to just one election if you define a voting district to vote for the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner of the Electoral College vote.

Sauk has voted for the Wisconsin winner in eight straight elections. But these game-changing trends remain on the sidelines. Sauk voted for Trump in 2016 by 109 votes. Door voted for Biden in 2020 by just 292 votes.

Finally, let's look at the development of Wisconsin's “lead districts” four years ago.

Prior to this election, seven Wisconsin counties had voted for the presidential winner in each of the seven previous elections dating back to 1992: Marquette, Forest, Lincoln, Racine, Sawyer, Juneau and Richland.

How much predictive value did these counties have in 2020? Zero. All seven voted for the state and national loser Trump. There have been enough realignments in the last decade to make a county's voting history before 2016 a very dubious predictor.

I think a lot of journalists who flock to these places understand that the Big Wether label is pretty tenuous. We visit them because these places illustrate what it's like for voters to live in a 50/50 political environment. And because their election story gives our “battlefield” stories more resonance. (I admit that I've written my share of major stories over the years and made repeated trips to Richland, Juneau, and Sauk.)

But are there places that have a more compelling claim to being educational?

My list would begin with the counties that embody the key voting trends that shape our elections. And these places also get a lot of attention.

In 2020, the main electoral trend in Wisconsin was a Democratic surge in the suburbs that flipped the state from red to blue.

The decisive vote shifts occurred in the blue suburbs of Madison (Dane County) and the red, blue and purple suburbs of Milwaukee (Milwaukee, Waukesha and Ozaukee counties).

These counties were the truest election barometers in 2020.

On the other hand, they were not the best barometers in 2016. Democrats made gains this year in Dane, Waukesha and Ozaukee. But that didn't matter because the state's smaller, more rural counties in western, northern and central Wisconsin were so strong for Trump that he became the first Republican to win that state since 1984.

In short, the most important electoral signals from the last two presidential elections came from completely different parts of Wisconsin.

And that is the crucial puzzle of 2024. This state, like many other states, has not pulled together politically. Some parts of Wisconsin are getting redder. Some have become bluer.

If you focus on the first group of counties, you might think that former President Trump will win that state.

If you focus on the second point, you might think that Vice President Kamala Harris will win.

Even if we can see the political trend lines in these places, we don't know which trend lines and which places will prove crucial.

So my head will be on a pivoting election night.

I'll be looking at the purplest metropolitan area in the state, Green Bay-Appleton.

But I'll also watch a lot of very red and very blue places to see if they get redder or bluer. It's not about who wins these lopsided counties, it's about how big the margins are.

I'll be watching to see if Democrats stop their erosion in the rural West and North.

I'll be watching to see if the Republicans stop their erosion in the Milwaukee suburbs.

I'll see if the Democrats' vote lead in the state's second-largest and fastest-growing county, Dane, increases by another 20,000 or 30,000 votes, as it has in almost every presidential election for decades.

I'll be watching to see if Republicans make inroads in Democratic cities with voters of color and white workers, from Milwaukee to Racine to Janesville.

I'll be particularly interested to see whether Trump's performance improves or worsens in populous counties that were a big problem for him in 2020. Of the 15 Wisconsin counties that generated the most votes, Trump's points lead worsened compared to 2016 in 13, but remained the same in one and improved in one (Kenosha).

Finally, since I'm a sucker for election trivia, I'll also take a look at Door and Sauk, the only two counties that have voted for the Wisconsin and Electoral College winner in every Trump election to date.

It will be in keeping with our 50/50 era if no county in Wisconsin can make that claim once this election is over.

Then we may have to bury the whole groundbreaking idea.

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