5 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Henrik's avatar

Washington is the most exurban/pseudo-rural of the three, correct?

Expand full comment
Todd's avatar

Yes. Ozaukee is a lake shore suburb due north, which is trending blue a bit quicker. Waukesha is the biggest and is due west of Milwaukee. It is starting to get more purple pockets, the City of Waukesha and City of Brookfield in particular. Washington is to the northwest of Milwaukee County. It goes from exurban to rural real fast up that way.

Expand full comment
safik's avatar

Waukesha county moved significantly left from 2012 to 2016, Romney + 34.5 to Trump + 26.7 and then moved significantly left again in 2020 to Trump + 20.8.

The weird thing about it is that while it moved significantly left from 2012 to 2016, Hillary's share of the vote didn't increase at nearly the same rate as she only did a point better than Obama, but Trump's share of the vote was almost 7 points less than Romney. In 2020 the inverse happened where Trump's vote share didn't really change much, he did 0.4 point worse but essentially everyone that went 3rd party in 2016 went to Biden as his vote share was 5.4 points higher than Hillary's. It makes me wonder if 40/60 will be where Waukesha settles at for the foreseeable future.

Expand full comment
GoUBears's avatar

Pretty sure the future's brighter than that. Waukesha's one of 154 (5%) of counties where Trump 2020 failed to match Romney's vote total. It's one of four Romney counties with 100k+ votes in that group, along with Cobb, GA; Johnson, KS; and Oklahoma, OK. Good company to have.

Expand full comment
safik's avatar

You might be right, I'm open to a lot of different possibilities and Waukesha's weird asymmetry makes me wonder if maybe we don't see the movement based on the surface level point that comparing 2012 to 2020 the state votes more than 6 point to the right while moving almost 14 points left one would expect.

Looking at the numbers, a plausible reading of them would be that a bunch of Romney voters decided to go 3rd party in 2016 and then those same people went to Biden in 2020.

Expand full comment
ErrorError