A recent New York Times opinion piece, “Inside the Rise of the Multiracial Right,” described growing support for Republican politicians among Black, Latino, and Asian Americans. The article offered Milwaukee as a particular example, writing, “In Milwaukee, the unity of the Black Democratic vote is splintering – along with the institutions that held it together for so long.”

As evidence, the author quotes 5 Black Milwaukeeans disillusioned with the Democratic Party for various reasons, but the article includes not a single statistic about election results in the city. Likely, this is because the facts don’t match this narrative. In Milwaukee, the decline in support for Democratic candidates among Black voters has been very slight—noticeably less than the national average.

Across the nation overall, Pew estimates that 91% of Black voters cast a ballot for Clinton in 2016, 92% voted for Biden in 2020, and 83% for Harris in 2024. Those estimates were made using validated-voter survey data. The progressive data firm Catalist used a modelled version of the national voter file to estimate that Clinton won 93% of Black voters, Biden 89%, and Harris 85%.

I lack access to either of those kinds of data for Milwaukee County specifically. But Milwaukee’s extremely high degree of racial segregation means that patterns in ward election results reveal much about how different demographic groups vote.

A simple approach is just to measure how the county’s majority Black, white, and Hispanic wards voted. I calculated each ward’s majority using census block redistricting data (and cubic spline interpolation for intercensal years).

Majority Black wards gave the Democratic presidential candidate 90% of the vote in 2000, 88% in 2004, 93% in 2008, 94% in 2012, 93% in 2016, 91% in 2020, and 90% in 2024.

Compare that slight decline with the pattern in majority Hispanic wards. They gave the Democratic candidate 76% in 2000, 74% in 2004, 80% in 2008, 86% in 2012, 83% in 2016, 78% in 2020, and 72% in 2024.

Majority white wards moved in the opposite direction, growing more Democratic with time. They gave the Democratic presidential nominee 52% in 2000, 53% in 2004, 58% in 2008, 56% in 2012, 60% in 2016, 63% in 2020, and 63% again in 2024.

The simple ward-majority approach reveals clear patterns, but it hides the size of some changes. For instance, many non-Hispanic white people live in majority Hispanic wards, so, if those white people grow more Democratic as Latinos grow more Republican, the ward-majority calculation will underestimate the rightward shift among Latino voters.

For a more rigorous approach, I ran a regression model predicting Democratic vote share in each ward with independent variables for each racial group’s share of the adult population along with interaction terms for each individual election. In the model, 2000 is the base year.

The model predicts that a hypothetical 100% non-Hispanic white ward would’ve given the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore 44% of the vote. Every 1 percentage point increase in the Black share of the population correlates with a 0.5 point increase in Gore’s share of the vote. Every 1 point increase in the Hispanic share correlates with a 0.3 point increase for Gore.

Over time, Democrats improved with white voters in Milwaukee County. The model predicts that Obama would’ve won about 48% of the vote in a hypothetically entirely white in 2008. Biden would’ve won 52% in 2020 and Harris 56% in 2024.

The graph below shows how the model’s coefficients changed for the Black and Hispanic population share in subsequent years, relative to 2000. Relative to 2012, we see a clear shift toward the Republicans among both groups, but the shift is about four times as large for Hispanic voters as Black voters. Each of Trump’s elections saw a large increase in support among Hispanic voters. Among Black voters, Trump’s improvement was much smaller overall and statistically insignificant between 2020 and 2024.

Here is what the election data for Milwaukee County shows us. Black voters are by far the mostly Democratic-leaning group, followed by Hispanic voters, then white voters. This order has remained the same over the past 25 years, while the gaps between these groups have lessened.

Milwaukee County’s white voters probably gave Bush a majority over both Gore and Kerry. Since then, white voters in the county have moved left, now giving Democratic candidates a comfortable majority.

At the same time, Hispanic voters first trended Democratic, giving Obama large victories, with his peak popularity coming in 2012. Trump made strong gains with Milwaukee’s Latino population in each campaign.

Black voters in Milwaukee County shifted only slightly toward Trump, giving him a bit more of the vote in 2016 than Romney received in 2012. Another small shift toward Trump followed in 2020, but from 2020 to 2024 no statistically significant shift is evident.

As I’ve written elsewhere, Wisconsin’s electorate varies from the national average in a few ways. No state has been as narrowly divided in three consecutive presidential elections as Wisconsin in Trump’s three campaigns. Turnout dropped nationally but increased here from 2020 to 2024. Although I lack data measuring this, I suspect that per capita campaign spending rivals any historical precedent as well. And throughout the Trump era, the rightward turn among Milwaukee’s Black voters has been muted compared to the national change observed by Pew and Catalist.

The photo above shows four of Milwaukee’s newest houses. They were built in 2024 in the Midtown neighborhood by the large affordable housing developer Gorman and Co.  Gorman’s goal for the project was to “serve as a proof of concept that market-rate, owner-occupied hous[ing] can work in the area,” according to reporting by Urban Milwaukee.

Instead, it looks like the original developers will lose their shirts on this project—yet another example of how impractical market rate construction remains in most of Milwaukee.

Back in 2021, Gorman expected the houses to cost around $250,000 to build, with sale prices somewhere under $200,000. To make up the difference, the city created a TIF district contributing $75,000 per home, funded by future property taxes from these new homes.

The market changed dramatically in the early 2020s with construction inflation far outstripping the consumer price index. Those “250k” houses wound up costing “approximately $400,000 to build” according to a Gorman official speaking near the project’s competition in August 2024.

Reflecting the 60% increase in costs, the houses originally went on the market at listings of $359,900 and $369,900 (for the two different floor plans). 324 days after the initial listing, the first home finally sold on April 4, 2025. The closing price: $281,000, 24% less than the initial asking price, which was itself below the reported development cost.

How much does new construction really cost?

It can be tough to find detailed, current, and public information about construction prices. Recently, I acquired the applications for all 47 proposed developments applying for affordable housing tax credits in Minnesota during 2024. These applications include a detailed development budget with dozens of line items for specific costs. I’ve requested the same information from Wisconsin but have not received it. Some legal fees likely vary between the states, but I expect development costs to be basically similar between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

This table shows a simple cost breakdown across all the projects. I’ve removed acquisition costs from these calculations, because many affordable housing projects get the land for free. Leaving aside any land costs, the median housing unit cost $414k to build. Of that cost 75% went to the construction budget, 10% to the developer, 7% in professional fees (architect, permitting, legal, etc.), and 6% to financing costs (insurance, interest, etc.).

The next graph shows the per-unit total cost vs. the number of units in the development for each project. There is a wide range in costs per project, but generally, larger projects are cheaper. Projects with 50 or more units had a median per unit price of $389,000, compared with $454,000 for those with fewer than 50 units.

The absolute cheapest proposed development was a 65-unit senior-housing apartment building with a per-unit cost of $300,000. Any family-sized housing development inevitably cost more.

How do total construction prices translate to monthly rents? Imagine if you had to pay off a $300,000 unit at a fixed 6% interest rate over 30 years. The principal, interest, and taxes alone would be $2,415 a month. For the median $414,000 unit, the bare minimum PITI and tax payment would be $3,333. In reality, costs are even higher. Occupancy is always less than 100% and apartment developers must budget for repairs, maintenance, and insurance.

Where can the market afford to build new housing in Milwaukee?

This is one of the most underappreciated facts about housing in cities like Milwaukee. We don’t build housing because, in many (if not most) places, you cannot sell a new house for what it costs to build it. And without significant subsidizes, you cannot charge the rents required to finance the construction of a market-rate apartment building.

Let’s take $350,000 as the bare minimum price required to build a standard detached, single-family home. Citywide, just 7% of houses are worth this much.[i] This improves to 43% among houses built since 2000. Still, most ‘modern’ houses in the city are not worth what it would cost to replace them.

This simple fact, in most neighborhoods houses cost more to build than you can sell them for, explains why the city has so many empty lots. In total, I count 1,500 non-tax-exempt empty lots where you could build a house right now under existing land use rules.[ii] 38% of those lots allow single family development under the existing rules, 44% duplexes or triplexes, and 17% quadplexes or more. The quadplex-eligible empty lots are overwhelmingly in the poorest areas of the city. I count 150 lots in just the 6^th and 15^th aldermanic districts which a private developer could buy right now and build a quadplex on by-right.

This is the basic conundrum: vacant parcels are common in neighborhoods where prevailing values are far below the level needed to finance new construction. Where home values are high enough to finance new construction, buildable lots are scarce. While it’s possible that developers could tear down existing houses to build new ones, this is practically unheard of in Milwaukee, even in neighborhoods where denser development is already legal.

For example, there are over 3,500 single family homes which could be replaced with a quadplex under existing zoning and lot size rules. But I cannot find a single instance of a quadplex replacing a single family home in my parcel records going back to 1990.

Accessory Dwelling Units

For these reasons, I’m most optimistic about accessory dwelling units as a way to add housing units in Milwaukee. They are cheaper to build and can fit in those neighborhoods of the city where property values are highest.

Also, ADUs are nothing new for Milwaukee. I count about 1,200 city lots classified as a “single family” or “duplex” but which hold multiple residentially buildings. Sometimes called “carriage houses,” they are almost entirely in the older neighborhoods surrounding downtown.

According to this 2025 analysis by Angi, the home contractor marketplace, the typical ADU costs $180,000 to build, with prices ranging between $40,000-$360,000. Costs are cheaper for internal basement or garage conversions and higher for new construction.

I wanted to know how many homeowners in Milwaukee might be able to afford costs in this range, so I modeled the home equity of every local homeowner as of January 2025.[iii] Citywide, the median homeowner has accrued $128,000 in home equity. 66% have at least $100,000 and 26% have $180,000 or more. In total, I estimate 18,000 Milwaukee households have enough home equity to finance the average cost of an ADU.

How many would actually do it? I don’t know. In Seattle, where ADUs are far more expensive, they still permit close to 1,000 a year. Right now, in Milwaukee, we’re averaging fewer than 50 new single family homes or duplexes across the entire city in a typical year. We lose about the same number of units to conversions of duplexes into single family homes. Even a small number of people choosing to build ADUs would be a meaningful change from the status quo.

[i] I’m using the 2024 assessed value and adjusting it by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue’s 0.9024 equalized assessed value ratio for the City of Milwaukee.

[ii] I calculate this based on the lot’s current zoning classification and its lot size. Some lots may have idiosyncratic dimensions which further reduce the allowable density.

[iii] I have data on the purchase date and price of every owner-occupied house in the city. To calculate accrued equity, I subtract the owner’s modeled remaining principal from the 2024 equalized assessed value of the property. I model remaining principal by assuming that the owner paid 5% down, received a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at prevailing interest rates, and has stayed current on their payments without refinancing. Obviously, individual circumstances will vary from the average predicted by the model.