Analysis of Proposed Legislative Redistricting Plans submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court

In December 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the existing state legislative maps. If the state legislature and governor cannot agree on new maps, the Court ruled that they would choose a remedial map from among a list of submissions.1 Those submissions were due to the Supreme Court on January 12, 2024.

The Court’s majority opinion described a set of criteria that they would use to evaluate the maps. However, they did not define specific metrics. Each party submitting a map was free to choose their own metric when arguing why their plan is best. There are many empirically legitimate ways to measure concepts like compactness and partisan balance. The most important thing is that the measures be applied to each plan in exactly the same way. That is what I have done in the analysis below.

To analyze these plans, I have constructed an open source repository of code and data available here. That repository generates the scorecards below, along with many more metrics. For instance, this file includes the results of each presidential, gubernatorial, US senate, attorney general, and state treasurer race in each proposed district from 2012-2022. I encourage interested readers to explore the complete resource for themselves.

Update 1/18: On January 17, the Court rejected the Petering submission because Matthew Petering was not among the original parties to the case.

Assembly

scorecard for proposed remedial assembly plans

Population Deviation

This measures how well each plan achieved equal populations across districts. It is the range between the most and least populous districts, divided by the ideal district size. Lower numbers are better. The new submissions fall into two camps. The Law Forward, WILL, and Legislative Republican plans each have population deviations close to 1%. The rest of the plans have deviations closer to 2%.

Majority Minority Districts

Federal law requires that, under certain circumstances, districts be drawn where minority voters have the ability to elect candidates of their own choosing. In Wisconsin, that has generally meant 5 districts where Black adults make up a majority and 2 majority Latino districts. All the plans here accomplished that, with the exception of the Senate Democrats plan, which created a sixth majority Black district.

Contiguity

This is one is a simple pass/fail requirement. Every component (census block) of a district must be touching the rest of the district, with the exception of literal physical islands. The old maps were thrown out in December because the Supreme Court chose to interpret the Wisconsin Constitution’s “contiguous territory” requirement literally.

Geographic Splits

It’s impossible to draw contiguous, equal-population districts without splitting counties, municipalities, and wards. But the Court prefers plans to split fewer of them, if possible. Here I measure the number of municipalities, counties, and wards split into multiple districts, which themselves cross into other municipalities or counties. (I don’t count districts which lie entirely within a larger municipality or county).

Across all geographies, the plan submitted by Legislative Republicans has the most splits. WILL’s plan splits the fewest municipalities and counties, but more wards. The Wright Petitioners’ plan splits no wards. These ward split totals do not include splits in wards which the parties agreed not to count in a joint stipulation filed on January 2nd.

Compactness

There are many ways to measure compactness, but they generally show similar rankings. See this table for multiple measures of compactness. In the scorecard below, I show each plan’s average Reock score. The Reock score is the ratio of the district’s area to the area of the smallest circle than can be drawn around the district. A score of 1 equals perfect compactness, so higher numbers are better.

Five of these seven plans have closely clustered Reock scores, between 0.36 and 0.39. The WILL plan achieves an average Reock score of 0.41, and the Petering (FastMap) plan a score of 0.44.

Partisan Balance

The partisan balance of a district could be measured in many ways. Here, I use a statistical model to predict the results of the 2022 state legislative election had they taken place in these proposed districts. I show both the likely number of seats won by each party, as well as the partisan lean of the 50th seat (determining majority control).

The most Republican-leaning plan is, unsurprisingly, the plan submitted by the Wisconsin Legislature. It creates 35 Democratic seats to 64 Republican seats. Democrats would need to carry the state by 16.3 points (58.15% of the two-party vote) in order to win a majority of the Assembly.

The WILL plan slightly softens this Republican advantage, creating 39 Democratic seats to 60 Republican.

All the other plans are more favorable to the Democrats. The most Democratic-leaning plan is the one submitted by Law Forward, which would create (per my model), 49 Democratic seats to 50 Republican ones. Democrats would need to win the state by 3.3 points (51.65%) in order to win a majority.

Senate

The scores for the Senate maps are generally similar. Recall that each Wisconsin State Senate districts consists of three adjacent Assembly districts.

Notably, the Senate Democrats plan and the Petering (FastMap) plans both create outright Democratic majorities, according to my model of the 2022 election. Of course, only even or odd-numbered elections take place in a given election year. The 2024 State Senate elections will cover only the even-numbered districts. Of those 16 seats, 6 are currently held by Democrats and 10 by Republicans. The Wright plan includes the most Democratic-leaning even-numbered seats (10), followed by the Evers and Law Forward plans (9 each).

scorecard showing proposed remedial senate plans

Edit: The plan submitted by the Senate Democrats contains 7 Assembly and 2 Senate districts which are not contiguous according to the Census Bureau’s Census Block GIS file. However, a joint stipulation filed by the parties states that the disconnected census blocks should not actually be counted as noncontiguous. I have accordingly edited these scorecards and this blog post to reflect this. I have also removed these blocks from the list of wards splits in all plans, and I have corrected an error in the calculation of Reock Scores.

Edit 1/18: I have added a footnote explaining the Court’s 1/17 decision to exclude the Petering map.

  1. If none of the proposed remedial maps satisfy the Court, they may request that their hired consultants draw one as well. ↩︎
Continue ReadingAnalysis of Proposed Legislative Redistricting Plans submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Disapproval, discontent, and uncertainty: Marquette expert observers describe 2024 election dynamics

On the one hand, “a year is forever in politics,” so don’t panic about where you think the party and candidates you favor are standing this far from the November 2024 national election.

On the other hand, there is a strong prospect of an unprecedented presidential election between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump in a time of great discontent around politics, and standard understandings of political dynamics may not apply.

And some of the things going on politics – such as former Trump Cabinet members becoming opponents and critics of Trump – are not easy to explain.

So the outlook for the 2024 election for president is complex, fascinating, and uncertain, in the view of three nationally respected political observers, each with ties to Marquette University, who took part in an “On the Issues” program Nov. 29, 2023, in the Lubar Center of Marquette Law School.

The three statements at the start of this blog post summarize thoughts from, respectively, Professor Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll; Craig Gilbert, a fellow at the Marquette Law School Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education; and Marquette Professor Julia Azari, a political scientist who is quoted frequently in national discussions on politics.   

“A Trump-Biden matchup would be so unprecedented,” said Gilbert, formerly the Washington bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. An incumbent president against a former president is not the only reason for saying that. The ages of the candidates, especially widely held perceptions of Biden being too old, and the large negative ratings of both candidates are also factors.

“We live in an era of chronic disapproval and discontent,” Gilbert said. “Everybody ‘s unpopular and everybody’s unhappy. Who’s happy?”

Franklin said a good reason to pay attention to poll results at this point – and the Marquette Law School Poll released both national and Wisconsin results recently – is not to predict how elections a year from now will turn out. It is to see how races are shaping up and, in the long run, to be able to understand more about the course that leads to final outcomes.

The race for the Republican nomination is dominated now by Trump, Franklin said, but Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations while Trump was president, does better than Trump in head-to-head match-ups against Biden. Franklin said Republican voters are split, with about 70% having favorable opinions of Trump and 30% having unfavorable opinions. Even if Haley looks strong against Biden, overcoming Trump within the Republican race will be a big challenge for her. “You’ve got to get the nomination to become the nominee,” Franklin said.

Azari said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was positioning himself as “Trump-plus” and Haley as “Trump-light” in appealing to voters, while former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was running as the anti-Trump. Support for DeSantis has been slipping, Christie is not gaining momentum, and Haley has become the alternative to Trump getting the most attention among Republicans.

Gilbert said about 20% of voters are “double haters,” with negative opinions of both Trump and Biden. They could become important in shaping the race, as could voters who have a somewhat negative opinion of Biden but who might vote for him in a match against Trump.

Looking to Wisconsin, Gilbert said voting patterns in the state have changed significantly in the past couple decades. The “WOW counties” — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington Counties, adjacent to Milwaukee County – were long-time Republican bastions, but Republican margins have grown smaller in recent elections. Some rural parts of Wisconsin used to be more “purple,” with Democrats sometimes doing well, but have become increasingly “red” and supportive of Trump. And Dane County, including Madison, has continued to gain population and increase in its power as a  Democratic bastion. “It’s a different map” than it was 20 or 20 years ago when it comes to analyzing Wisconsin voting, he said.

Azari said Trump continues to appeal to “low-propensity voters” who are less likely to vote usually but are more likely to turn out for Trump. Many of them are in more rural parts of Wisconsin.

Franklin said that how much Trump voters will mobilize in 2024 is likely to be an important part of determining the election outcome.

Derek Mosley, director of the Lubar Center and moderator of the program, asked the three what had made Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, such a strong candidate for re-election in Wisconsin in 2024. Azari said Baldwin “has avoided becoming a national lightening rod” for conservatives. Gilbert said that in her Senate victories in 2012 and 2018, Baldwin did better in Republican-oriented parts of the state than other Democrats. Losing some areas by smaller than expected margins should not be underestimated as a valuable part of winning Wisconsin as a whole, he said. And Franklin said that, even though no major Republican candidate for Senate has joined the race so far, it is not too late for that to happen and the Wisconsin race could still heat up.   

The conversation may be viewed by clicking below.

Continue ReadingDisapproval, discontent, and uncertainty: Marquette expert observers describe 2024 election dynamics

Crossover voting is uncommon, even in Wisconsin’s wide-open primaries

In some states, only officially registered members are allowed to vote in a party’s primary. Not so in Wisconsin, which lacks any kind of party registration and where voters can choose to cast a ballot in whichever primary they please. They must pick only one, but all the party primaries—Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green, etc.—are all printed on a single ballot.

The main argument for closed primaries is that they prevent crossover voting, particularly party raiding. Party raiding refers to members of a different party disingenuously casting ballots in another party’s primary, thereby thwarting the will of the target party’s actual members.

Despite these fears, existing research shows that crossover voting is uncommon. When it does happen, it’s usually “simply because [crossover voters] prefer those candidates to the candidates offered in their own party’s primary, or they view their own party primary as a foregone conclusion and want the best possible set of candidates to choose from in the general election.” Deliberate party raiding, almost never matters.

Wisconsin is a good place to measure crossover voting, since our election system offers no obstacles to voters doing this. Data from the Marquette Law School Poll is consistent with the existing research showing little-to-no meaningful amount of crossover voting. I last wrote about this in 2019. Here is an update.

Because there are so few crossover voters, I pooled several survey waves preceding each election to calculate the following statistics. I don’t include statistics from the 2022 primary because we didn’t intended primary participation in a comparable way.

The April 2016 primary vote in Wisconsin was still contested among both Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls. In surveys leading up to that election, about 2% of self-identified Republicans and 3% of Democrats told us they planned to vote in the other party’s primary.

Similarly, the 2018 August partisan primary featured a competitive gubernatorial contest between Democrats and a contested Senate primary among Republicans. Less than 2% of the self-reported members of either party planned to crossover to the other party’s primary.

In both 2016 and 2018, the shares of each party planning to vote in the other primary were statistically indiscernible. That’s not true of 2020, when clearly more Republicans voted in the Democratic presidential primary than vice versa. This isn’t surprising, given that the Democratic presidential primary was competitive, while the Republican primary to renominate incumbent Donald Trump was a formality.

Across the six survey waves we fielded preceding the 2020 primary, we found that about 5% of Republicans planned to vote in the Democratic primary, compared to just 2% of Democrats planning to vote in the Republican primary.

plot showing the proportion of each party's voters planning to vote in the other party's primary

It would be a mistake to assume that these crossover voters are engaging in strategic “party raiding.” It’s more likely that the small numbers of voters who identify with one party but choose to switch primaries are expressing a sincere preference between the other party’s candidates.

In the graph below, I’ve pooled the responses across all three primaries, 2016, 2018, and 2020. For both Democrats and Republicans, I calculate their average self-described ideology on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is “very conservative” and 5 is “very liberal.”

Democrats who plan to vote in the Republican party are noticeably more conservative than Democrats who are staying in their own primary. Likewise, Republicans crossing to the Democratic party are less conservative than Republicans staying in their own primary.

The average self-reported ideology of Republican and Democratic primary crossover voters are so similar to each other that they are statistically indistinguishable in this sample.

plot showing the average self-reported ideology by preferred primary

In 2020, slightly more Republicans intended to be crossover voters than Democrats, presumably because the Democratic presidential primary was more interesting. Depending on the outcomes from the first series of state primaries, the situation may be reversed in 2024.

Continue ReadingCrossover voting is uncommon, even in Wisconsin’s wide-open primaries