I suggest he allow himself to be beaten with flag poles and sprayed with bear spray and then see if he sings the same tune.
How does this knucklehead get elected? The state went to Biden and Obama, so it’s not like Democrats can’t get elected there. He’s obviously seriously deficient in intellect, I can’ t understand how he can win statewide elections.
Scott Walker won and Johnson has won twice. And, of course, Trump carried it in 2016. Every single Democrat in WI has to turn out in order to win statewide, no one can sit it out because they’re not ‘inspired’ or wanted to pout about Bernie (2016)
One thing I think a lot of people misunderstand about “purple” states is to think that they’re purple because they’re made up of large proportions of independent voters who switch back and forth between Democratic and Republican nominees based on the specific candidates, and so the parties would be incented to nominate more moderate candidates to have statewide success.
But the Wisconsin Republican Party is as MAGA-hat wearing (if not more so) than the GOP in any other state. It’s just that they’re roughly balanced out at the state level by an equal number of Democratic voters. Rather than trying to appeal to the very small number of truly swing voters, they have been successful by goosing their own turnout by the couple of percentage points it takes to put them over the top. Johnson has barely cleared 50% in either of his races.
Wisconsin is a Republican-dominated state with Democratic strongholds in Milwaukee, Madison, and the Menominee Reservation. Basically, without the the cities and a scattering of a few other Western Lake Superior and southern counties, Wisconsin would be as red as Missouri or Indiana.
Stranger
“Red except for the cities and a scattering of a few other counties” is true for almost every state.
Yes, for the most part urban areas are concentrated reservoirs of the Democratic party, but Wisconsin is exceedingly MAGA red despite being a “purple” state for exactly the reason you note above. Electing Ron Johnson (and previously Paul Ryan) is not an anomaly.
Stranger
The balance in numbers of raw votes is indeed precarious. But in statewide races, Wisconsin Dems have an oh-so-slight edge. In previous times this might mean that the party who ran the best candidates had the best chance of winning. Going forward it means which party best encourages its turnout.
The vote distributions have become nearly universal throughout all the states. Elections are coming down more and more to the proportion of urban/suburban voters vs rural ones. I live in a MAGA county within a 20-point blue state. We’re a 20-point blue state because of our population density.
Isn’t that true of the vast majority of states? I mean, if you look at the results by county, with the exception of a few New England states, most states are a mix of red and blue, with the urban areas being generally blue, and rural areas being generally red.
Here in Texas there’s a real town vs. country split; it’s almost like two different worlds. Outside of the cities, it’s all Jesus, guns, trucks, country music, patriotic nonsense and all sorts of weird-ass Trump or religious billboards. In the cities, it’s not.
And the Democrats usually skew younger (I’m especially thinking Madison) and too often are very fickle turning out to vote.
Young voters do have the worst turnout rates. But there’s always a “but.” Last year showed the highest rate of young people voting since 1972 (around 55%). The current generation appears to be pretty engaged. On the flip side, college-aged voters are among those most heavily targeted by restrictive voting laws that are being engaged in states with GOP legislatures.