Both Donald Trump and Tammy Baldwin translated their slender statewide victories into hypothetical 1-seat majorities in the Wisconsin State Assembly, each winning a majority of the vote in 50 of the chamber’s 99 districts.

Under the map used in the 2022 election, I estimate that Trump would have won a majority in 64 districts and Baldwin in just 36.[i] The table below shows the outcome in various maps proposed during the 2022 and 2024 redistricting disputes.

Although drawn by Gov. Tony Evers, the current maps are slightly less favorable to Assembly Democrats than the plans submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court by the progressive firm Law Forward and the Wright Petitioners.

However, the current map is far more favorable to Democrats than the map drawn by Evers’ own People’s Map Commission. That group, which used a nonpartisan criteria, proposed a map under which Trump would’ve won 55 seats.

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Of course, actual Democratic candidates only won 45 Assembly seats, falling 4 seats short of the total won by Kamala Harris and 5 short of Baldwin. This is because Republican Assembly candidates were (with exceptions) more popular than Donald Trump.

The graph below shows how each Assembly race compares with the outcome of the presidential race in that district.

Five GOP Assembly candidates won districts that Trump lost. They are as follows:

• 88^th (Green Bay area): Benjamin Franklin won 50.3% of the two party vote, compared to Trump’s 49.8%
• 61^st (Southwestern Milwaukee suburbs): Bob Donovan won 51.6% to Trump’s 48.9%.
• 53^rd (Neenah/Menasha): Dean Kaufert won 50.6% to Trump’s 47.8%.
• 51^st (Dodgeville area): Todd Novak won 51.7% to Trump’s 48.2%.
• 21^st (Southern Milwaukee suburbs): Jessie Rodriguez won 51.4% to Trump’s 47.9%.

One Democratic candidate carried a seat that Trump won. Longtime incumbent Steve Doyle carried the 94^th district (north of La Crosse) with 50.3% of the two-party vote, compared with 51.1% for Trump.

There were no split results in the State Senate. The closest race came in the 8^th district, covering Milwaukee’s northern suburbs. Here, Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin won 50.8% of the two-party vote, compared with Harris’ 51.2%.

This graphic also shows the 17 odd-numbered districts where elections will be held in 2026. They are visualized as empty circles, plotted at the zero point on the y-axis.

Of the likely competitive seats in 2026, Harris and Baldwin both won all of them.

• The 31^st (Eau Claire) is currently held by a Democratic incumbent. Harris won it by 2.2 points, Baldwin by 4.8.
• The 17^th (Southwestern Wisconsin) is held by a Republican. Harris won it by 1.1 points, Baldwin by 4.7.
• The 21^st (southern Milwaukee metro) is held by a Republican. Harris won it by 1.3 points, Baldwin by 2.3.
• The 5^th (western Milwaukee metro) is held by a Republican. This is the rare district where Harris outperformed Baldwin. Harris won it by 6 points and Baldwin by 5.

Democrats will need to win 3 of the 4 districts listed above to win a majority of the State Senate in 2026.

As the careful reader may have noticed, the current State Senate map actually has a structural advantage for Democrats. Despite losing the state by about a point, Kamala Harris won a majority of the vote in 18/33 Senate districts.

This table shows the number of senate districts won by Trump and Baldwin under selected alternative map proposals. Again, the difference is striking.

Under the map used in 2022, Trump’s narrow victory in 2024 was enough to win a supermajority of senate districts. Under the new maps, he wins fewer than half.

Under the nonpartisan People’s Map Commission, he would’ve won 21 of 33 seats.

Two common stories about the 2024 election are (1) that the election reflects a global anti-incumbent wave, and (2) that it was a reflection more of enthusiasm for Donald Trump than Republicans generally. Regarding the latter point, Wisconsin GOP strategist Bill McCoshen argued, “This was a Trump wave, not a red wave. And Republicans should be very careful how they interpret the results of this.”

There is good evidence in support of both those perspectives. It’s true that incumbent parties—left, right, and center—have lost elections across both hemispheres. Donald Trump has enjoyed electoral success by turning out infrequent voters who show up less reliably during elections when Trump isn’t on the ballot.

Still, the data from Wisconsin’s state legislative elections show the limits of both those narratives. Of the 82 contested state assembly races, Donald Trump was more popular than the GOP assembly candidate in just 12. While incumbent parties and executives may be unpopular, some degree of incumbency advantage still clearly endures.

Data Note

This post uses unofficial 2024 election results. The results of state legislative races are taken from the Associated Press. I collected presidential and US Senate results from each voting tabulation district in the state (available here). To calculate the results of these races within each state legislative district, I intersected the centers of voting tabulation district polygons with the polygons defining state legislative districts.

Access source data for this post from this GitHub Repository.

Note: A previous version of this post incorrectly described the 88th district and showed the D minus R margin of the vote including third parties. Those errors have been corrected.

[i] I calculated this by first allocating unofficial 2024 reporting unit results into census blocks. I disaggregated reporting units to blocks using allocation weights derived from registered voter addresses in the L2 Voter File. Then, I used the block assignment files for each plan to aggregate votes.

Voter turnout in Wisconsin this year was very high—among the highest ever in presidential elections in Wisconsin. Unofficial returns show 3,422,802 votes cast for president, up from 3,298,041 in 2020.[i]

About 125,000 more people voted in 2024 than 2020. Meanwhile, the state’s over-18 population grew by an estimated 56,000 between 2020 and 2023.[ii]

We won’t know the 2024 population estimate until sometime next month. If the over-18 population increase is fewer than 69,000, that will indicate that the share of adults voting in 2024 exceeded 2020, which was already an exceptional year.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission calculates that 72.9% of adults voted in 2020, which is the third highest rate since their data begins in 1948. In 1966, they estimate 72.0% voted and in 2004, 73.2%.[iii] Depending on the 2024 adult population estimate, the 2024 election will likely join this group of extremely high turnout elections where just shy of 3-in-4 adults participated.

Keep in mind that turnout as a share of the voting eligible population is even higher. Here are some estimates from the University of Florida Election Lab.

In 2024, the Election Lab estimates that 76.4% of eligible voters in Wisconsin cast a ballot, compared to 63.5% nationally. In 2020 it was probably 75.0% in Wisconsin, compared to 66.4% nationally. Turnout in Wisconsin is usually higher than US average, but this year the gap grew especially large. In 2020, turnout was 8.6 points higher in Wisconsin, growing to 12.9 points higher in 2024.

The true voter turnout rate can only be estimated because the denominator (actually eligible citizens) is unknown. At least in a month or two, we’ll have more recent data for the state adult population, from which we can further refine these estimates of the eligible share.

Estimates for the adult population of counties and municipalities will become available later in 2025. The kind of granular data needed to estimate ward-level adult population turnout rates won’t be available until the 2030 census.

The absence of high-quality data will not prevent the creation of turnout statistics, nor should they, necessarily. We cannot wait for the 2030 census to begin figuring out which voters were inspired by the last campaign and which weren’t. My point in elaborating these difficulties is to warn you that the first turnout statistics you see will not be the final word on the matter.

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Here is what the limited data we do have can tell us about voter turnout around Wisconsin.

• The number of votes cast for president increased in 71 of 72 counties. Only tiny Menominee was the exception (18 fewer votes cast).
• The number of votes cast grew by more than the 2020-2023 increase in the adult population in 65 of 72 counties. The 7 counties where vote change lagged adult population growth are Bayfield, Vilas, Forest, Ozaukee, Menominee, Ashland, and Burnett.
• In Milwaukee County, the number of votes cast grew by 4,346, despite the adult population falling by about 11,900 between 2020 and 2023.
• In Dane County, the number of votes cast grew by 21,153, compared with an adult population increase of about 15,600 between 2020 and 2023.
• In Waukesha County, the number of votes cast grew by 7,756, while the adult population grew by an estimated 6,900 between 2020 and 2023.

The Census Bureau’s Population Estimate Program doesn’t provide adult population estimates for individual municipalities, so we’re stuck with total population estimates.

• In the City of Milwaukee, the number of votes cast grew by 560 votes, while the total population fell by about 15,800 between 2020 and 2023.
• In the City of Madison, the number of votes cast grew by 11,740, while the total population grew by an estimated 5,100 between 2020 and 2023.

It is not the case that turnout fell in Democratic-leaning communities and increased in Republican ones. There is no correlation between a county’s change in turnout and the share of the vote received by Donald Trump. There may be a slight correlation between the increase in turnout and the increase in Trump’s share of the vote relative to 2020.

High turnout helped Trump because a group of infrequent voters showed up and disproportionately supported him. These “low propensity” voters were spread evenly across the state, contributing to Wisconsin’s small but remarkably uniform 1.5-point swing toward Trump.

Note: This post was updated to include a new analysis of the correlation between turnout and partisan vote share.

[i] The number of votes cast for president is slightly lower than the total number of ballots cast, which I have not collected. In 2020, 10,764 voters turned in a ballot but declined to vote in the presidential contest.

[ii] These numbers are from the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program and are estimated for July 1^st of each respective year. The estimates for July 1, 2024 will be released in December.

[iii] The WEC numbers use total ballots cast as their denominator (not presidential votes), and they use a slightly different estimate of the over-18 population. Their estimate comes from the Wisconsin Department of Administration which uses a somewhat different methodology and calculates their annual estimates for a different date than the federal Population Estimates Program.