Scrimshaw Spotlight: Wisconsin, And Coalitional Fragility
Can Democrats Win Wisconsin Again In 2022?
One of the things that I've come to focus on a lot more since the 2020 election is the concept of Fragility - regardless of what you think the median or modal outcome of a race is, how fragile is that outcome, and how fragile is the path to victory?
In Georgia, I maintained that the Democratic lead was particularly un-fragile, because the kinds of GOP turnout on the day that would be required to win were just so high that there wasn't any realistic prospect they'd lose, even if it got closer than I expected - which it did, but they still won, proving the point. Florida is the GOP example of this - they have a very stable coalition, because while the projected GOP win will never be excessive, the range of options is very narrow, and even if Dems get close, they're not winning the state any time soon.
The concept of coalitional fragility also applies in Wisconsin, where Democrats have won the last two major statewide years, narrowly both times. The GOP have a weird problem in the state, which is they have two different coalitions they need to cater to, and in 2018 and 2020 they managed to appeal to one of - but not both of - those constituencies. In 2018, Scott Walker ran up the margins in the WOW collar around Milwaukee, winning the suburban 5th district by 24%, a sizable overperformance on Donald Trump. The problem for the GOP was they lost the southern 3rd district, won by Trump in 2016.
This J Miles Coleman map - he of Sabato's Crystal Ball - shows the GOP's problems very well, because when the GOP get their suburban margins in a midterm, they do so by running a tonal moderate who is unable to get out Trumpian low-propensity whites out to the polls in the same numbers as Trump can, which means the GOP don't win the 3rd but get substantially better margins in the 5th. When the GOP go for those Trumpian, low-propensity whites, as they did last year, you lose the suburbs, and that's how Trump only won the 5th by 15%, a 5% swing to Biden compared to 2016 and a 9% swing compared to 2018. That's the ballgame, right there, for the GOP. They need a candidate who can get closer-to-Trump numbers in the 3rd but also get closer-to-Walker numbers in the 5th.
In terms of what I expect 2022 to look like, I'm going to be using the 2018 baselines, because I don't expect the GOP to be able to match Trump's margins in the 3rd, nor do I expect Ron Kind to be able to get Biden's margins in the 5th, and so I suspect the 2022 map will look closer to the Evers-Walker map. This isn't a choice made with some partisan bias - it really doesn't matter in that sense, it's just about having the proper baselines in your head. "Ron Kind will run ahead of Trump in WI-03" isn't a relevant baseline, because he needs to outrun Evers for the result to be actually impressive.
So what does a GOP victory look like in Wisconsin? There are two paths that are at least internally consistent - run even with Walker in the 5th, 4th (Milwaukee), and 2nd (Madison) districts and run ahead of him everywhere else, namely the 3rd, or run even with Walker in the rural and working class areas of the state and do better in the 2nd, 4th, and 5th districts. Are either of those realistic? The first is plainly not going to happen if Ron Kind is the Democrat. Kind won the 3rd by 2.6% on the same day Trump won it by just under 5%. With all that Trumpian turnout out of the system, Kind will at least hold that 2.6% margin, and probably increase it a little bit. Even if the other seats don't find his mannerisms and strategy appealing, the idea that someone with well established strength with white working class voters is going to underrun Evers is for the birds. So, you need to cut Dem margins in the rich, white, socially liberal areas of Madison, Milwaukee, and the suburbs of both if you're looking at winning statewide as a Republican in 2022.
My views on this topic have to be clear at this point, but it's worth reiterating that nobody has been able to tell me why the Global Realignment will reverse here, especially given the unwillingness of the GOP to moderate in the face of an election loss. Ron Johnson, who I don't expect to run again, is going on about how he wasn't scared of the January 6th terrorists because they were white, but if it were Antifa or Black Lives Matter, he'd have been scared. Hell, today he went anti-vax, saying he wanted a "limited" distribution of COVID vaccines. These are not exactly the words of a political party looking for a revival of their fortunes amongst social liberals, are they?
The GOP's problems in Wisconsin are very easy to diagnose - they can't get the two ends of their coalition to talk to each other anymore. When they do well in the Driftless, they bleed in the collar, and when they stop the bleeding in the collar, the Driftless snaps back. It's the same thing we've seen in Australia, where the Australian right has seesawed between trying to win suburban and urban seats like Chisholm and (the now named) Macnamara at the cost of regional seats like Longman and Herbert, and then suffering losses in those urban and suburban areas when they snapped back to recover their regional losses. This problem isn't just about Wisconsin, or the US, but it is the logical consequence of the right's choices over years now. And in Wisconsin, the GOP need to manage to do what the Australian right hasn't managed yet, which is to stitch together both ends of a fragile coalition that has come unstuck the last two cycles. Can they do it? I don't think so, not against Kind. The suburban genie is out of the bottle, and they won't get enough rural turnout to match Trump. And that's why the GOP's chances in 2022 - both in the House and in the Senate - are so fragile.
The problem for the GOP in Wisconsin indeed; yes, Kind can do just well in the Driftless but at the same time, the Global Realignment of suburbs towards Democrats will just continue.