Presidential job approval

Doug Sosnik, former White House political director and deputy legislative director to President Bill Clinton and a consultant for the National Association of REALTORS^®, has identified eight battleground states he believes will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. You guessed it: Wisconsin is on the list.

The key question for President Joe Biden is whether he can win reelection with approval ratings in the low- to mid-40s. History suggests the answer could be no, but there are factors specific to the current political environment that helped Democrats limit their losses in the 2022 midterms in Wisconsin and other swing states.

A president’s overall approval rating is a fairly good guide to the actual vote the president receives. As of June 17, Biden’s national job approval rating was 41% approve and 54.6% disapprove in the Real Clear Politics poll average. In Wisconsin, Biden’s approval was 45% approve and 54% disapprove in the November 2022 Marquette Law School poll, which was the last survey available at the time this article went to press. Both surveys suggest Biden will start in a weak position to win Wisconsin in 2024.

However, in 2022, Democrats held their own in Wisconsin despite Biden’s poor approval ratings. Democrat Gov. Tony Evers defeated Republican Tim Michels in the gubernatorial election, while Democrat Josh Kaul bead Republican Eric Toney in the attorney general race. And in the April 2023 election, liberal Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz soundly defeated conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly by a hefty 11 percentage points, flipping the ideological majority on the court. Evers, Kaul and Protasiewicz made abortion the focal point of their campaigns.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 effectively reinstated Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban, and many Republicans acknowledge that the abortion ban played a central role in Republican losses. As Democrat pollster Paul Maslin of Madison noted to Politico after the spring Supreme Court election, “... but this abortion issue, that’s where they (Republicans) have to be scared to death. It hurt them everywhere, but it especially hurt them in Wisconsin.”

If the Wisconsin ban on abortion remains in place through the 2024 elections, Biden’s low job approval numbers might not be the drag on his reelection that history would suggest. Democrats fully intend to keep the Wisconsin abortion issue front and center unless or until something changes.

U.S. Senate Race

Democrat U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced in April that she’s running for a third six-year term, setting up a potentially high-profile race in Wisconsin as Democrats attempt to maintain their slim control of the Senate in 2024.

Several Republicans have expressed an interest in getting into the race, but they have no declared candidates in this perennial battleground state. Establishment Republicans who have expressed an interest include Rep. Tom Tiffany from Hazelhurst, businessmen Eric Hovde and Scott Meyer, and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark. 

Wisconsin will be a key state next year as Democrats look to maintain the White House and the Senate, where they currently have a slim two-seat majority. Wisconsin has been flagged by political insiders as one of 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024, but Baldwin has a record as one of the most politically successful candidates in Wisconsin since entering office in 1986.

Baldwin has served on the Dane County Board, the Wisconsin State Assembly, the 2nd Congressional District, and currently the U.S. Senate since 2013. As noted by political commentator John Nichols, Baldwin “has mounted more than 15 campaigns at the local, state and federal levels of American politics, and she has prevailed every time.”

Still, the competitiveness of the Badger State, which Biden carried by about half a point in 2020 and Trump won by a similar margin four years earlier, should not be underestimated. Wisconsin has a long history of close statewide elections. In fact, 16 Wisconsin statewide elections over the last 22 years were gut-wrenchingly close. These 16 elections include presidential, gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, attorney general and state Supreme Court elections.

Challenging legislative district maps

With Janet Protasiewicz set to join the state Supreme Court in August, Wisconsin Democrats are hopeful the court’s new liberal majority will be receptive to legal challenges of the Wisconsin legislative and congressional district maps.

Today, there are 63 Republicans and 35 Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly, and 22 Republicans and 11 Democrats in the Senate. Republicans have a 6-2 advantage in the Wisconsin congressional delegation.

The state’s current maps were drawn by Republicans in 2021 based on maps they drew 10 years before. During this time, Republicans have maintained strong control of both houses of the legislature. Different maps could change the balance of power and help Democrats pick up legislative and congressional seats.

Protasiewicz has harshly criticized the Wisconsin maps, calling them “rigged” and “unfair,” and has signaled a willingness to revisit a 2022 state Supreme Court ruling that left the Republican-drawn maps in place. Democrats describe Wisconsin’s maps as one of the most “extreme gerrymanders” in the country and expect to quickly see new legal cases that challenge the current maps and ask the court to create new, fairer maps.

Any legal challenge to Wisconsin’s legislative and congressional districts will be strongly opposed by Republicans. A lawsuit, if the court agrees to hear it, challenging the state’s current Republican-drawn maps will trigger another bitter fight over the districts.

So, once again next year, Wisconsin will be positioned in the political eye of the storm with a possible tipping point in the presidential election, a Senate race that could influence which party controls the U.S. Senate, and newly drawn legislative and congressional districts that help Democrats pick up seats in Madison and Washington. There’s never a dull moment in Wisconsin politics.