The state of the Wisconsin electorate: a conversation with Barry Burden, UW-Madison

MADISON, Wis. (WKOW, enjoyiana.com) – Former President Donald Trump added Waunakee to the latest of his campaign stops on Tuesday. The focus of his remarks will likely center the economy, and he is set to speak at Dane Manufacturing at 12:30 p.m. This is his second visit to Wisconsin within a week.

One Trump supporter spoke with 27 News Tuesday morning about his excitement.

“I’m looking forward to a former president being in our town,” Mason Spear said. “It's just exciting to see him come near Madison, especially because Democrats think that ‘he's not welcome in Madison, he's not big in Madison.’ But look at this. He looks pretty big in Madison area, and I'm proud to say that.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers released a statement ahead of his visit:

“As president, Donald Trump was a disaster for Wisconsin, and we haven’t forgotten. A second term would be a heck of a lot worse – Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda would hurt working families, cut Social Security and Medicare, dismantle support for public education across the country, and more. I know Wisconsin families, and they’re going to reject him again in November. Vice President Harris is the only candidate in this race fighting to lower costs, cut taxes, and invest in Wisconsin’s future.”

“Not just our futures, but our kids' futures and our grandkids futures rely on this election,” Spear said. “It's very important for everyone to get out, vote, get out and learn, and get out and experience the fun of rallies and everything.”

On Saturday, Trump spoke at an arts center in Prairie du Chien, Wis. He talked mostly about immigration and migrant crime and its impact on rural communities, standing before posters with mugshots of “illegal immigrants” and the crimes they were charged with.

“I’m thrilled to be back in this beautiful state,” Trump said. He talked about Vice President Kamala Harris and four years of border control that allowed “millions and millions of people,” to come through and make “our civilization unsafe.” Trump said Harris’s first name incorrectly several times but nonetheless assured that his campaign would win Wisconsin and make America great again, rallying cheers and applause from the crowd.

Meanwhile, Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Douglas, Ariz. for the first time since becoming the Democratic nominee and the second time as vice president. There she called for tighter asylum restrictions, vowed to stop fentanyl from coming into the U.S., and outlined her plans to fix “our broken immigration system,” Reuters reported.

"I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane," Harris said. "We can and we must do both."

Back in Madison, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) visited the Orpheum Theater Friday evening to campaign for Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Her visit came a week after Harris’s rally at the Alliant Energy Center. Ocasio-Cortez advocated for health and reproductive rights to a group of over 500 students and supporters. 

“It’s right here in Wisconsin that is the front line of the fight on reproductive rights, not just for folks in this state, or in the region, but also nationally, because Wisconsin is a must-win state,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

It’s not unheard of that a state like Wisconsin has received so much attention from candidates and politicians acting as surrogates for the Republican and Democratic campaigns. In fact, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Political Science Professor Barry Burden, we’re likely to see even more visits from people passing through the state before we reach November 5.

“It’s an all-out blitz to focus on just the handful of states that are up for grabs, and Wisconsin is right in the middle of that pack,” Burden said. 

Voters are being targeted from every angle.

“The methods that the parties use to reach out to voters are somewhat different,” Burden said. “Politicians are trying to find voters where they are in their daily lives, where they are likely to encounter content, and pushing outreach to them wherever they're going to find it.”

For some, it’s social media, and for some, it’s the news. For many, it’s the political ads on nearly every screen with an internet connection, which are hard to avoid.

“Media are the main way that the public learns about the candidates, but it looks quite different from one person to another,” Burden said. “Although traditional broadcast television continues to fade, the campaigns still invest heavily in ads on local and national television stations, in part because the people who watch local TV, especially the news, are highly likely to vote.”

Many 27 News viewers shared their disapproval of the frequency of political ads shown between programs, but news stations aren’t to blame. Federal regulations require that the paid ads be shown in their entirety, uncensored. And just like any other election year, the ads are here to stay.

“Campaigns that have enough resources also advertise on streaming services, website, social media platforms, radio, and more – it's an "all of the above" strategy to reach the relevant audiences. Newer forms of media allow for more tailoring of messages to particular types of votes, so that is appealing to campaigns even though the effectiveness of targeting in this way remains somewhat uncertain.” 

In addition to being a political science professor, Barry Burden is also the Founding Director of the Elections Research Center at UW-Madison. They foster cutting-edge academic analysis of national and state elections to further the scholarly understanding of factors that influence voter decision-making and outcomes. I reached out to Burden to discuss the state of elections in Wisconsin and to put some of his academic research about voting, voter reception of a female president, and the concept of electability among candidates and voters into the context of our current political climate.

Partisan Politics in Wisconsin

“Polls are showing that the top two issues for voters are the economy, by far, especially inflation as part of that, and immigration,” Burden said. “You would think those would play into the hands of Republicans because those are things that people are discontent about. They're not happy with the economy, they're not happy with the state of immigration and Kamala Harris as part of the administration, but the Republicans have not been especially disciplined about making arguments against the Biden and Harris administration. Trump in particular, tends to hit a lot of different things in his rallies and the advertising isn't always in line with his messaging.”

“Democrats have very successfully been able to pull it back to the freedom theme and focusing on abortion rights in particular, which have been in the news ever since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade two years ago.” 

Burden accurately predicted the rhetoric of both Trump and AOC ahead of their visits. Both are examples of politicians who utilize social media, and the passion of the demographics who follow them, to rally support not just for their parties, but for their public interests.

“Each voter has their own sort of portfolio of concerns, and Democrats, I think, have been pretty effective at driving attention towards the things that work to their advantage.”

Burden also talked about how the Democratic and Republican campaigns target different voters personally, and how it impacts the way people vote in elections. 

“Republicans tend to prefer contacting people by mail and making phone calls with some email and other things mixed in,” he said. “Democrats are more likely to use text and door-to-door visits, you know canvassing through neighborhoods. Both campaigns are doing all of those things, but there are slight differences in the kind of modes that the campaigns prefer.”

“I think that partly reflects the sort of voters that are attracted to each party,” he added. “The Republican party is older and more rural, on average. The Democratic party is younger and more urban, and so those populations gravitate to different kinds of media.” He also mentioned that topics including climate change, concerns about democracy itself, and the orderly nature of elections are issues of importance. 

I asked, and Burden described three groups of voters that represent the voting behavior of the average Wisconsinite. 

“There are the hardcore partisans who are very tuned into politics or paying attention and are casting those absentee ballots as soon as they're available in September,” he said. “Many of them are also volunteering on the campaigns, attending the rallies of candidates who passed through the state, doing other kinds of volunteer work for the campaigns.”

“Then there's sort of a second group, which I think has their minds mostly made up, but they're not living day to day with what's happening in the campaign. They'll pay a bit more attention as election day gets closer and cast a ballot, but all still pretty firm in their preferences, especially at the presidential level, either for Harris or Trump.”

He also talked about a small segment of the electorate: the group of voters who cast their ballot for President Barack Obama in 2008 and in 2012, but who switched sides and voted for Trump in 2016.

“It's maybe five or 10% of Wisconsin voters who are truly persuadable, or swing voters, people who might have voted for Obama and then Trump and then to Biden, or might split their ticket between, say, Tammy Baldwin and Donald Trump or some other combination,” Burden said. 

“Many of them are torn because they feel ambivalent about the parties. Many of them are not really tuned in or interested in politics, and so they'll come around pretty late in the process, probably in late October, early November, and kind of size up the candidates at that point and how they think things are going to make decisions,” he said.

He added that while the group is small, they are pivotal because of the closeness of our state elections. This is also probably why we are seeing so many politicians focus on Wisconsin, because if they can convince an unsure voter in any capacity, they could likely win the election.

“Voters have to make a decision if they're interested in those candidates, whether to stick with them, or whether they fear that it might spoil the election or throw the result to a candidate they like even less,” Burden said. 

What he is referring to is considered “strategic voting” per his and Phillip Edward Jones research published by Harvard University’s Department of Government. The paper “Strategic Voting in the United States” was prepared for the Plurality and Multiround Election Conference at the Université de Montréal on May 30, 2006.

“There is some kind of strategic voting going on in Wisconsin,” he said in our conversation. “Research shows that in very competitive presidential elections like the one we're having in Wisconsin, that voters tend to shy away from non-major party candidates and go to the major party candidate that is the least offensive to them.”

“To act strategically, voters must have the opportunity, ability, and motivation to do so,” their research asserts. “Although we have little to say about cross-national differences in ability and motivation, we argue that Americans in fact have many more opportunities for strategic behavior than voters in other nations.”

Burden and Jones contend that three features of American electoral politics welcome the strategic voting we are likely to see in November: 

• the fact that third-party candidates must appear on the ballot of a general election;

• presidential primary elections feature multiple candidates which welcomes strategic voting along party lines; and 

• presidentialism and federalism require voters to anticipate combinations among parties including Congress, governorship, state legislature, mayoral appointments, and other positions.

“It's often a sense of regret for something that happened in a previous election that voters look back and wonder what could have happened had we behaved differently,” Burden said. 

Strategic Voting in the Fall 2024 Partisan Primary

In August, more than 83,000 voters cast their ballots in Madison for the Fall 2024 Primary. Voter turnout reached a record 45 percent, the highest for a fall primary in 40 years, according to the City of Madison officials. The city also reported that 23,321 absentee ballots were sent in as of the Sunday before the election. 

“Voters are probably aware of the presidential race. It's hard to not bump into that every day, but in Wisconsin, there's also a competitive U.S. Senate race, the entire assembly, half of the State Senate, and other local county races that may be of interest, including school levies and some statewide issues,” Burden said.  

This is where the strategic voting comes into play. Burden says there’s some work to be done among voters to get educated on more than just who is on the ballot and where, especially in the Dairy State. 

“In addition to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, there are other minor party candidates and independent candidates on the ballot,” Burden said. “Robert Kennedy Jr. (Independent) is still on the ballot at the moment, Jill Stein (Green), Cornel West (Justice For All), and others. They're not doing particularly well in the polls, but they're earning enough of the vote that they might make the difference in the presidential outcome.”

One example of this is when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign on August 23, and subsequently announced that he was endorsing Trump. 

AP reported that Kennedy’s internal polls showed his presence on the ballot would hurt Trump and help Harris, though public polls hadn’t necessarily reflected that. He also cited free speech, the war in Ukraine, and a “war on our children” as reasons why he would remove his name from ballots.

“These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump,” Kennedy said at his event in Phoenix.

CNN reported that Kennedy insisted that he wasn’t ending his campaign, but rather he was withdrawing his name from appearing on ballots in swing states, including Wisconsin.

“My name will remain on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming — or helping — President Trump or Vice President Harris. In red states, the same will apply,” he said. “… But, in about 10 battleground states, where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name, and I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me.”

Kennedy filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin on September 3 to remove his name from the ballot claiming that third-party candidates are treated unfairly in comparison to the major parties. AP reported that a Dane County judge refused to oblige, saying that candidates must remain on the ballot unless they die. State election officials have since filed a petition with the Wisconsin Supreme Court asking them to take the case. They argued that it needed a timely and final resolution given that absentee ballots featuring Kennedy had already been sent. 

On Friday, September 27, the liberal-majority court ruled that Kennedy would remain on the ballot in Wisconsin, calling his briefing “inadequate.” The Supreme Court of the United States of America also rejected Kennedy’s motion to appear on New York’s general election ballot on Friday.

What do the polls say about voters ahead of November 5?

Kennedy’s suspension happened before the most recent Marquette Law School Poll was conducted from August 28 to September 5. The results, published on September 11, found that 14% hadn’t heard that he ended his campaign, compared to large majority (86%) that did. Kennedy was viewed as unfavorable by 46%, favorable by 38%, and 16% hadn’t heard enough to form an opinion.

The partisan makeup of this sample is 35% Republican, 32% Democratic, and 32% Independent.

The results highlight that Vice President Kamala Harris is supported by 52% of registered voters to Former President Donald Trump’s 48%. 

In a multicandidate race, Harris is the choice of 47%, Trump 43%, Kennedy 6%, Libertarian Chase Oliver 1%, Stein 1%, and Constitution Party Randall Terry 0% among registered voters. Among likely voters, numbers are relatively similar: Harris 48%, Trump 43%, Kennedy 6%, Oliver 1%, Stein 1%, Terry 1%, and West 1%. 

Regarding the U.S. Senate Race, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is supported by 52% to Republican Eric Hovde’s 48%. When the ballot includes independent candidates, Baldwin receives 51%, Hovde 45%, Phil Anderson (Disrupt the Corruption) 2%, and Thomas Leager (America First) 2% among registered voters. For likely voters, those numbers are the same. Independents favor Baldwin by 65% to Hovde’s 33%. Baldwin’s favorability rating was 47% compared to 46% unfavorable. Hovde’s favorability was 34% compared to 43% unfavorable. 

One advantage Baldwin had over Hovde according to the poll is that she was seen as committed to Wisconsin interests by 61% compared to 51% for Hovde.

They also found that voters were more enthusiastic this time around in comparison to past polling cycles. Among enthusiastic voters, 53% were “very enthusiastic” to vote for Harris in comparison to 47% who were “very enthusiastic” to vote for Trump. Sixty-four percent of Trump voters were “not at all enthusiastic,” in comparison to 35% of that same group for Harris voters.

An AARP poll found that 90% of voters ages 50 and older say they are “extremely motivated” to vote in this election. Harris led the former president among voters overall, 48% to 45%. 

In the Law School poll, registered and likely voters were asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Trump and Harris. According to the poll results, Harris is seen favorably by 47% and unfavorably by 51% of registered voters, 2% said they didn’t know enough about her to have an opinion. 

Voters favored Tim Walz over Ohio Senator and Republican running mate J.D. Vance. In fact, Walz was the only candidate of all national candidates with a positive net favorability. The two face off in a debate Tuesday, October 1 in New York hosted by CBS News. 

Trump’s approval when president was 46% and disapproval 54%. His approval before the 2020 election was 47% approval to 52% disapproval. In September, favorability toward Trump was virtually unchanged from July: with 43% favorable and 56% unfavorable. Less than 1% lacked an opinion about the former president. 

While President Joe Biden has been less a part of the candidate conversation since he passed the baton to Harris, he was also a part of the poll. They found that approval for the 46th POTUS remained low at 42% and disapproval hovered near 60%. 

In addition to favorability, the concept of electability, or the chances of winning a general election, has been a topic of interest in the last few presidential elections. One thing Burden noted was that Harris campaign’s strategy is to heavily reliant on the people who voted for Biden four years ago, which was a challenge when she was merely running as a candidate for the Democratic party years ago. 

“I think she's been checking the boxes, and that has helped her establish and solidify the slight lead she has in the polls,” Burden said.

“The electability concerns come up a bit more in the primaries as voters are thinking about which candidate in their party is most likely to do well in the November election,” he added. “Kamala Harris seems to have been hurt by that when she ran in the Democratic primaries back in 2019 and 2020. There was a sense from some Democrats that being a female candidate or being a candidate of color was a disadvantage in the general election.”

A paper published by Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research titled “Information and Perceptions of Electability in Primary Elections,” unpacks what voters consider important, and looks at how electability during primaries contributes to polarization. Burden was an author in this research. He also authored alongside Yoshikuni Ono and Masahiro Yamada an article in 2017 titled “Reassessing Public Support for a Female President” which proves timely given the likelihood of America experiencing its first president who is a woman. Both pieces of research provide framework to help contextualize the political, social, and electoral environment in which we find ourselves in.

Electability politics and public support for a female president 

During the fall of 2019, the big conversation around electability was between the then Vice President Joe Biden and other Democratic hopefuls for the party’s nomination. The current Vice President Kamala Harris was a part of that diverse cohort of nearly three dozen candidates who eventually dropped out the race. Now Harris is the front-runner for the Democratic party and has raised over $678 million total since she became the nominee, according to Forbes. 

“Kamala Harris, I think, had to do a bit more work this summer to show that she was electable,” Burden said. “She was not a familiar candidate. She had not been through debates. She had not done a lot of interviews. There was criticism of that, continues to be some criticism of that. But the rallies, I think initially, were very successful. Her choice of a running mate in Tim Walz has worked well. She's now been through a debate that I think most people would say she won against Trump– a few weeks ago– and is sitting for more interviews and is sort of filling out the kinds of things we expect of a presidential candidate.”  

On the Republican side, Former President Donald Trump has raised around $309 million in total per Forbes reporting. His third time running for president makes Trump a unique case, Burden said. He says that the baggage he brings to the campaign following the fact that he’s been impeached twice, been indicted and found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush money trial in New York, and survived two assassination attempts within a two month time span, has worked in his favor. Burden said that Trump’s ability to use a lot of the bad news about him has fueled his campaign.

“Trump is unique because of the fervor of his supporters, they are so behind him. They're enthusiastic,” Burden said. “I think the assassination attempts on him only made them more committed to him and his cause. He’s lost the popular vote twice, but he was President of the United States, and that alone is enough to convince a lot of voters that he's an electable candidate, even with the baggage that he brings.” 

Marquette Law School poll results showed that almost 60% of voters thought that Trump was too old to be president, in comparison to 15% for Harris. Close to 65% of Wisconsin registered voters said that Trump has behaved corruptly in comparison to a little under 40% for Harris. Less than half said that Trump has the communications skills to be president. Around 57% said that Harris has the right temperament compared to around 42% for Trump. Forty percent said that Trump is honest compared to 52%.

Burden et al. showed in their electability research that a number of factors contribute to the concept of electability. Using a pre-registered experiment conducted against the backdrop of senatorial and gubernatorial elections two years ago, they found three candidate attributes that may shape voter perceptions: 

1. Ideological moderation,

2. Experience in elected office, and

3. Campaign fundraising success

They found that Republican and Democratic primary voters generally develop and apply electability perceptions differently. Democratic voters interpret ideological moderation as a sign of electability whereas Republican voters perceptions draw more heavily on candidate fundraising. 

Burden emphasized that these factors which point to a sort of asymmetric polarization, may contribute to voter perceptions of electability. It’s also worth noting that polls paint a picture, but they are not to be taken as a definitive representation of every individual’s politics or how they will always vote.

In terms of public support for a female president, Burden et al. assessed the impact and legacy Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left behind as the first woman to be a major party nominee in 2016. They found that opposition of a female president was cut in half (from 26% to 13%), that the upper class was more hostile towards a female president, and men remained around the same markers for support. Self-identified Democrats didn’t show as much hostility in comparison to Republicans. They also associated class with ideology, which partially reflects what we are seeing now among the conservative/liberal divide.

“Harris is only the second woman to be on a major party ticket, so we don't have a lot of experience,” Burden said. “The research suggests that Hillary Clinton was penalized a little bit for being a woman candidate on the ballot. There were other things about her that were both attractive and repelled voters. Each candidate is a combination of things, but her gender was a factor.”

“It looks from the surveys like Republicans in particular discriminate or have a distaste for female candidates running for President, in particular, and Democrats, if anything, are slightly biased against male candidates and prefer female candidates,” he continued. “Those two things don't exactly offset, there's probably a little more of a disadvantage overall than an advantage, but it's a factor.”

“I think what's interesting this time is that Kamala Harris is not really emphasizing or playing into her immigrant background, her racial identity, her gender or any of that,” Burden continued. “She's behaving like any kind of traditional white male candidate would, and that's somewhat different from Hillary Clinton, who's really emphasizing the path breaking nature of her campaign. So far, that's been working, but we'll have to see on election night whether her gender ends up playing a role in some important way.”

Looking ahead to November 5, 2024

In Wisconsin specifically, Burden said there are four groups of voters and places that are important to the outcome of the election.  

“One is rural voters in smaller communities, farm areas, small towns, the outskirts of cities, especially in the north and west part of the state,” Burden said. “That part of Wisconsin has really moved strongly in the Republican direction over the last 10 years or so, really started before Trump, but has continued to be a really important base of support for them.”

“A second area to look are the Milwaukee suburbs, the so-called “Wow counties,” centered around Waukesha. Those are a really important source of Republican votes, but they have been moving a little bit in the democratic direction in recent years,” he continued. “They're not all suburbs, actually, some of them are rural communities and small cities. They've been becoming more diverse, and more cosmopolitan and less reliably Republican.” 

The third is Dane County. 

“Dane County is a really important part of what happens in the state. It's the fastest-growing part of the state. Very high turnout in this part of Wisconsin, and very high support for Democrats. You have a lot of young, upwardly mobile, progressive voters, somewhat more diverse than the rest of the state, and it's very helpful to the Democratic Party, and a lot of young students in particular, who are helpful.”

Last is Milwaukee County.

“Milwaukee County, I think, is a sometimes a concern for Democrats,” Burden said. “They need to do well there. It's one of the biggest counties in the state. [It] has a large African American population [that] is very supportive of Democratic candidates. But turnout in Milwaukee can vacillate. It does move up and down a little more than in other parts of the state. So I think we've seen Democrats putting their attention there, realizing how important that is to them. So those are, those are four places or kinds of groups around the state that I think are going to be really important to the outcome.”

The unofficial summary and results of the Wisconsin Primary Election in Milwaukee County showed that Democratic voters made up nearly 75% and Republican voters 25%. According to The New York Times, 89% of Republican voters in Mke. County voted for Eric Hovde, in comparison to 82% in Dane. Another survey showed that Harris garnered the support of young adults in critical swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

“It's the magic of the Electoral College that some states end up being very competitive, and they're the ones where the campaigns put all of their resources,” Burden said. “Wisconsin has been very consistently one of the most competitive states in the country, aside from the two Obama victories in 2008 and 2012. Really, for the last quarter century, Wisconsin has been on a knife edge in its presidential races and in statewide races often as well.”

“Wisconsin has 10 electoral votes out of 538 total, but the outcome is likely to be so close that Wisconsin could be the tipping point state, and it very likely was in the last election."