The spotlight is on Wisconsin for the 2024 election
Wisconsin’s legislative and statewide races have received significant attention from local and national officials due to the competitive nature of the newly drawn maps. In the upcoming general election, with a near-even split of Democratic and Republican voters, close contests are expected. The state’s political landscape is evolving, offering Democrats a newfound opportunity after recent rulings on legislative maps.
Wisconsin’s legislative and statewide races have caught the attention of local and national officials under newly competitive maps in what is expected to be a competitive general election in November.
In the 2022 midterm elections, outside groups spent $93 million on races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer. That number surpassed the record $61.86 million spent during the 2018 midterm elections in Wisconsin.
“Every time there’s a race in Wisconsin, it seems a new record for outside spending is broken, and it’s just the sky’s the limit,” Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director Matt Rothschild told Wisconsin Public Radio. “Right now, we’re out here in the wild, wild West.”
Wisconsin has a near-even split between voters registered as Democrats and Republicans. Races are often close in the Badger State.
“We are a purple state, and there is a reason the Republican National Convention is here,” Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming told the Washington Examiner. The Republican National Convention is scheduled for July in Milwaukee. The 2020 Democratic National Convention was scheduled to be in Milwaukee but moved to a virtual format due to the pandemic.
Despite close races, Republicans have a 64-35 majority in the state Assembly and a 22-10 majority in the state Senate. The playing field may have evened for Democrats, however, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down its previous legislative maps, which were considered to be some of the most gerrymandered in the country.
“When you get a new set of maps, a lot of things can happen,” Schimming said.
For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats have a chance to win a majority in the Wisconsin Assembly. According to CNAnalysis, a site that accurately predicted 98 of 99 Assembly races in 2022, Democrats have a 26% chance of flipping the chamber.
“You can dive into the numbers, but that’s the very top line is that under the old maps, right, like, [Republicans] can win,” Joe Oslund, communications director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, told the Washington Examiner. “Republicans could lose statewide and even still win.”
Under the old maps, which were put in place in 2012, Republicans held at least 60 of the 99 seats each term. For 28 of the last 30 years, Republicans were able to hang on to their majority.
“Since they’re drawn now fair, whoever wins a majority of the votes is going to win a majority of the seats,” Oslund said.
The presidential election is expected to be close in Wisconsin as well. In 2020, President Joe Biden flipped the state blue by only 20,000 votes. In 2016, former President Donald Trump flipped the state red by a little more than 27,000 votes.
Outside Democratic spenders are eyeing the Badger State’s legislative races to fuel ground-up excitement for statewide and federal races, starting with the state legislature.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has already donated $24,000 to each chamber of the Wisconsin legislature. Wisconsin is part of its $60 million budget this year. One group, The States Project, has pledged to spend $1 million in Wisconsin on behalf of Democrats.
Campaign finance has been of particular interest in the Badger State. In 2015, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, about a matter surrounding campaign finance laws in the state.
“Scott Walker is singularly responsible for rewriting campaign finance law in Wisconsin to make unlimited donations to state parties,” Oslund said.
Walker was investigated for possibly illegally coordinating campaign funds with conservative groups. In the 4-2 ruling, the high court concluded Walker had violated no such law, as the language surrounding campaign financing was “unconstitutionally vague.”
“[Walker] made great use of that, including with a lot of folks who are out of state,” Oslund said. “I definitely feel the frustration that there’s a lot of money in politics, it’s expensive to run these campaigns for sure.”
In 2023, Wisconsin Democrats outraised the state GOP by more than four times. According to Schimming, however, the Wisconsin GOP is outraising the Wisconsin Democrats in terms of in-state funding.
“We’ve outraised Wisconsin Democrats by more than 2-to-1 in in-state dollars,” Schimming said. “Right now, only 3% of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin fundraising comes from the state.
“They apparently can’t raise money in state, and almost all of their money comes from out of state,” Schimming said. “For them to go, ‘Oh, Scott Walker, changed the law’ doesn’t change the fact that they don’t seem to have the appeal in state.”
Those numbers differ for candidates in Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate races. Between the state’s two split senators, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has taken in more money than his Democratic counterpart from outside state lines. From 2019-2024, Johnson received nearly 70% of his funding from out of state.
For Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), 59% of her fundraising in the same time frame came from out of state.
Nearly 40% of the Wisconsin Democrats’ funding in 2024 has come from one man: Reid Hoffman, the founder of the social media site LinkedIn. He donated $2 million in January, contributing to their total of $5.4 million.
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In the first six months of 2023, Hoffman donated $3.6 million to Wisconsin Democrats, which, at that point, was about the same number Republicans had raised during that time. Wisconsin Democrats also caught the eye of fellow Midwest Democratic Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D-IL), who donated $1.1 million to the Wisconsin Democrats in 2023.
Wisconsin Republicans have quarreled with the state’s Democrats accepting the donations due to Hoffman’s ties to Jeffery Epstein, who was charged with a conspiracy to sexually exploit vulnerable girls. In 2019, Hoffman apologized for those visits, saying he went to Epstein’s private island to fundraise for a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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