MILWAUKEE — As thousands of GOP delegates, donors, legislators and activists descend on Milwaukee this week, Wisconsin will again find itself at the center of the political universe. 

It’s a spotlight the perennial swing state — where four of the last six presidential elections were decided by a margin of less than 1 percentage point — has long been accustomed to. 

President Joe Biden has visited the battleground five times so far in 2024, including his July 5 trip, when he made the state capital, Madison, a leading stop on his post-debate tour. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has held three rallies in Wisconsin since January. 

But Trump’s return Sunday ahead of the Republican National Convention where he’ll officially be crowned the party’s presidential nominee will be his biggest stage yet this cycle. 

Trump’s acceptance of his nomination will come days after a gunman opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., and after which he wrote in a social media post a bullet “pierced the upper right part” of his ear as he addressed supporters. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee said in a statement hours after the shooting that the convention would proceed as planned.

“I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social.  

Electorally, Trump has a mixed track record in Wisconsin; in 2016, he won the state by just 22,748 votes. In 2020, he lost it by nearly the same amount (20,682 votes).  

And he’ll be accepting his party’s nomination in a Democratic stronghold that was critical to his opponent’s victory in Wisconsin four years ago. Biden carried Milwaukee, the biggest city in the state, by some 146,000 ballots. 

Wisconsin Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said the presence of the RNC there shows “that Republicans are playing to win Wisconsin this time around.”

“The former president’s message the last several days has been similar to that, and I think that’s the right message to send a voter in Wisconsin: ‘I’m here to win and I need your help,’” McCoshen said in a Friday interview. 

Wisconsin is also critical to Biden’s re-election plans. His campaign sees winning Wisconsin, along with the two other “Blue Wall” states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, as “the clearest pathway” to reaching 270 electoral votes and a second presidential term, according to an internal memo from July 11 that was obtained by CQ Roll Call. 

Democratic counter-programming in the coming days — and the months ahead — should focus on “framing the election as a choice” between Biden and Trump, the memo states. 

“We have to show the material changes that the Biden-Harris administration is making in peoples’ lives and continue to show how Donald Trump has failed Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin,” Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore, who represents Milwaukee, said in a statement. 

Winning Wisconsin

In the nearly four years since Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson narrowly won re-election during the 2022 midterms — and at the same time, Democrat Tony Evers secured the votes to keep his seat as governor. 

From his perch as the top Republican officeholder in the state, and most recent GOP candidate to win statewide, Johnson said in a brief interview that he doesn’t think the state’s political landscape has shifted at all in the last couple years. 

“We’ve been a very closely divided state for a long time, if you really look at it,” he said. “The top vote getter in Wisconsin, historically, is still Barack Obama.” 

The Democratic playbook this cycle is similar to elections past. It is, in short: run up the score in bright blue Milwaukee and Dane counties (home to capital city Madison), while eroding Republicans support in the so-called “WOW” counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — surrounding Milwaukee that the GOP has historically counted on to deliver huge margins to their candidates. 

For Trump to succeed, he’ll look to hit key turnout benchmarks in Milwaukee and Dane, while activating rural voters in northern and western parts of the state and shoring up the Milwaukee suburbs along with northeastern Wisconsin’s “BOW” counties: Brown (which includes Green Bay), Outagamie and Winnebago.

Two of those three counties are fully within the 8th Congressional District, most recently held by former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who resigned in April. 

Having that open seat on the November ballots could help drive turnout up the ballot. But another factor is new legislative maps that redrew lines for the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate, where GOP lawmakers have held strong majorities for years. 

Democrats hope that the presence of more competitive legislative races on voters’ ballots following more than a decade of bicameral Republican control could produce some sort of reverse-coattail effect that would benefit their candidates, though that remains to be seen. 

Outperforming the top of the ticket

Biden’s poor debate performance last month ignited concern among Democrats that the incumbent’s presence at the top of the ticket could act as a drag on key Senate and House races critical to maintaining the party’s control of the chamber. 

But in Wisconsin, as in other swing states, incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin has been running ahead of Biden. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales listed Baldwin’s seat as one of the few in play this cycle, with a rating of Lean Democratic. She has also not appeared alongside Biden in recent visits to the state, including his trip to Madison post-debate. 

It’s not unusual for down-ballot candidates in Wisconsin to see better results than those in headline races. In 2016, for example, Johnson won 74,000 more votes statewide than Trump, notably outperforming the former president in suburban Milwaukee WOW counties. Four years later, when the presidential race was the only statewide contest on Wisconsin ballots, Trump saw some slippage in his margins across suburban Milwaukee and ultimately lost the state to Biden. 

During the 2018 midterms, Baldwin was re-elected to a second Senate term over a weak GOP opponent by more than 10 percentage points. Though she shared a ballot with prevailing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Evers, his margin of victory over then-Gov. Scott Walker was just 1 point.

Down-ballot candidates in Wisconsin have “often” run ahead of the top of the ticket, Marquette University Law School Poll Director Charles Franklin said in a recent interview. In Baldwin’s case, Franklin noted she “has generally outperformed other Democrats on the ballot.” 

“Baldwin does well in many parts of the state that are Republican territory [and] manages to lose by 10 points less than other Democrats lose those areas,” he added. “That’s been a real strength for her.” 

The latest Marquette University Law School poll, released a day before the June 27 presidential debate, found 45 percent of registered Wisconsin voters viewed Baldwin favorably, compared to 44 percent who viewed her unfavorably. Her likely Republican challenger, businessman Eric Hovde, logged a split of 23 percent favorable to 32 percent unfavorable. 

Biden, meanwhile, had a negative-18 net favorability rating, while Trump came in at negative-16. 

Since the debate, Biden has been dogged by questions about his age and fitness for office, attention that McCoshen, the Republican strategist, said is a positive for Trump, who “wants this election to be a referendum on Joe Biden.”

But Franklin said in a Sunday event in Milwaukee that the assassination attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday “shifts the focus away from Joe Biden, which is where it’s been for the last two weeks, to Donald Trump, to the convention, and to both his [vice presidential] selection and his speech on Thursday night.” 

“The acceptance speech on Thursday night will almost surely have skyrocketing viewer interest and attention to it,” he added.