Trump’s in the fight of his life to win reelection this fall. And that fight just got a whole lot more difficult.
As Donald Trump turned white as a ghost after receiving this damaging election report.
For decades, Wisconsin’s WOW counties—Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington—have been the bedrock of Republican support in the state, particularly in the suburbs of Milwaukee.
However, recent trends suggest that these traditionally conservative strongholds may be shifting leftward.
Waukesha County, with nearly 400,000 residents, is Wisconsin’s third most populous county, trailing only Milwaukee and Dane counties, both Democratic bastions. Given Wisconsin’s crucial role in national politics, Waukesha’s status as a Republican stronghold is essential for the GOP to maintain its competitive edge in statewide elections.
“It’s kind of a political joke amongst pundits that it all comes down to Waukesha County, Wisconsin. There is some truth to that —the turnout is really important for Republicans there. It’s really a place that they need,” explained Mike Wagner, a professor specializing in political communication and public opinion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Historically, the WOW counties have been among the most reliably Republican areas in Wisconsin. In the 2008 presidential election, despite former President Barack Obama winning the state by 14 points and carrying 59 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, his performance in Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties was notably poor.
In these three counties, Obama garnered less than 40% of the vote, some of the lowest figures in the entire state.
By 2012, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney secured 64.63% of the vote in Ozaukee County, once regarded as the most Republican of the three. However, this stronghold has since shown signs of weakening. “Ozaukee County was the most Republican county in all of Wisconsin in the 1990s, but that same time the ‘O’ in WOW has gone from being the most Republican county to, like, the 40 or 44th,” Wagner noted. “It’s really decreased in its power.”
Wagner pointed out that when Scott Walker ran for governor in 2014, Republicans enjoyed a more than 40-point margin in Ozaukee County. But by 2022, the Republican gubernatorial candidate won the county by just 10 or 11 points, signaling a notable shift.
From 1996 through 2020, Democratic candidates failed to win even a single municipality, town, or city within these counties. However, in 2020, President Joe Biden narrowly flipped the city of Cedarburg in Ozaukee County, indicating a shift in the region’s political landscape. “It used to be that the WOW counties really were lockstep together, and now the O in WOW is disappearing. Washington and Waukesha counties are still strongly Republican, Ozaukee County has been shifting more to the Democrats,” Wagner said. “WOW is losing its wow factor in a way.”
Washington County has now emerged as the most reliably Republican of the three. In 2020, former President Donald Trump won Washington County by nearly 40 points, while his margin in Ozaukee County was just 12 points, a sharp decline from Romney’s nearly 30-point victory there in 2012.
As Trump’s brand of right-wing populism gains traction in rural areas, it appears less resonant in the traditionally Republican suburbs like the WOW counties. This is a marked contrast to the popularity of former Speaker Paul Ryan, whose district included parts of Waukesha County. With Ryan and other conservatives like Romney stepping back from the party, it seems that these counties may be stepping back as well.
“When Trump first ran for president in 2016 in the Wisconsin primary, Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin primary, not Trump,” Wagner recalled. “After it was pretty clear Trump was going to be the nominee, and so lots of Republicans just were not wild about him, but once he became the party’s nominee, they got blind and voted for him.” However, after seeing Trump’s presidency, some of those voters switched to Biden in 2020.
Abortion has also played a significant role in this political shift, particularly among suburban women, not just in the Milwaukee suburbs but across the country. Wagner attributed some of the change in the WOW counties to the issue of abortion. “It’s been a huge issue, and it’s really been highlighted in voting in the state Supreme Court,” Wagner said, referencing the fact that Wisconsin voters elect their Supreme Court justices rather than having them appointed.
In recent Supreme Court races, the focus on abortion has been particularly pronounced, especially following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which briefly led to the complete outlawing of abortion in Wisconsin. In the state’s 2023 Supreme Court race, liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz secured victory, with her campaign heavily investing not only in Dane and Milwaukee counties but also in the WOW counties. Once again, Ozaukee County showed signs of shifting, with conservative candidate Daniel Kelly winning the county by just five percentage points, compared to Romney’s 30-point win in 2012.
The recent voting patterns in the WOW counties during the 2024 primaries further indicate a leftward trend. Wisconsin voters recently rejected two GOP-backed ballot measures aimed at reducing the governor’s spending power, after a campaign by Democrats urging a “no” vote. The results were telling: in Ozaukee County, only 50% voted in favor of the measures, while Waukesha County saw 57% support. Just ten years earlier, Walker had been reelected with over 70% of the vote in these counties.
The high turnout in the primaries, with 26% of eligible voters participating, the highest in 60 years for a presidential year partisan primary, suggests that the political dynamics in Wisconsin’s WOW counties are indeed evolving.
And if Donald Trump wants to win the Badger State, he will need to have a strong performance in these counties.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
