Past election results in Wisconsin aren’t always easy to find. Official, certified election results are spread across many different cumbersome Excel workbooks on multiple websites. And official statistics do not compile votes by municipalities.
To solve all of these problems, the Lubar Center has created a new online website, MULawPoll.org, which covers all presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races from 2000 through 2022. It also includes state legislative races from 2010-2022. The website will be updated with 2024 results once they have been certified.
The website includes a chapter for every county, featuring demographic data and sortable/filterable tables allowing deeper exploration of voting trends. A user can quickly answer questions like “How did the village of Cedarburg vote in past presidential elections?” or “How many Dane County municipalities voted for Tommy Thompson in 2012?” We also provide a table of election results aggregated by every municipality in the state, where municipalities that straddle county lines (like Wisconsin Dells) are presented as a single unit.
Other chapters include a long term overview of partisan strength in Wisconsin, an essay by Craig Gilbert about Wisconsin’s uniquely competitive political environment, and a detailed look at Marquette Law Poll data pertaining to the 2024 election written by Charles Franklin.
The website’s election data have been compiled from official returns, collected either from the Wisconsin Election Commission or the Wisconsin Historical Society. The underlying data files, along with documentation and processing scripts are available here.
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.
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.
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.
A look at overall opinion shows that the public is not keen on either Biden or Trump running for president again in 2024. Of all registered voters interviewed in the November 2022 and January 2023 Marquette Law School Poll National surveys, 34% would like Biden to run and 29% would like Trump to run.
Candidate
Yes
No
Biden
34
66
Trump
29
71
Among only registered voters who consider themselves Democrats or independents who lean Democrat, 49% would like Biden to run. Among registered voters who are Republican or independent but lean Republican, 53% would like Trump to run.
Table 2: Like Biden or Trump to run by party (including leaners)
Party, with leaners
Yes
No
Republican/Lean Republican
19
81
Independent
24
76
Democrat/Lean Democrat
49
51
Party, with leaners
Yes
No
Republican/Lean Republican
53
47
Independent
34
66
Democrat/Lean Democrat
6
94
This even split in both parties comes despite generally favorable views of both Biden and Trump among registered voters of their party. Biden is viewed favorably by 82% of registered Democrats and Trump is viewed favorably by 68% of registered Republicans.
Table 3: Favorability ratings of Biden and Trump by party (including leaners)
Party, with leaners
Favorable opinion
Unfavorable opinion
Haven’t heard enough
Republican/Lean Republican
6
93
1
Independent
35
54
11
Democrat/Lean Democrat
82
16
2
Party, with leaners
Favorable opinion
Unfavorable opinion
Haven’t heard enough
Republican/Lean Republican
68
30
2
Independent
27
66
6
Democrat/Lean Democrat
3
96
1
While Democrats are more favorable to Biden than Republicans are to Trump, there is reluctance among Democrats for a Biden run in 2024 even among those with a favorable opinion of him, 57% of whom wish him to run. Among Republicans who are favorable to Trump there is higher support for a run, 72%.
Table 4: Like to run by favorablity by party (including leaners)
Favorability
Yes
No
Favorable opinion
57
43
Unfavorable opinion
11
89
Favorability
Yes
No
Favorable opinion
72
28
Unfavorable opinion
10
90
Strength of partisanship also plays a role with Democrats more supportive of a Biden candidacy than are independents who lean Democrat, and likewise for Trump among Republicans compared to independents who lean Republican.
Table 5: Like Biden and Trump to run in 2024 by party identification, among registered voters
Party ID
Yes
No
Republican
18
82
Lean Republican
21
79
Independent
24
76
Lean Democrat
32
68
Democrat
56
44
Party ID
Yes
No
Republican
57
43
Lean Republican
41
59
Independent
34
66
Lean Democrat
8
92
Democrat
6
94
Among all registered voters, 42% say they would like neither Biden nor Trump to run in 2024, 28% would like Biden but not Trump to run and 24% would like Trump but not Biden. And only 5% would like to see a rerun of 2024.
Like Biden to run
Yes
No
Yes
5
28
No
24
42
About the Marquette Law School Poll
The Marquette Law School poll interviewed 1716 registered voters nationwide November 15-22, 2022 and January 9-20, 2023. The combined sample has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points. The sample of 775 Democrats and independents who lean Democrat has a margin of error of +/-4.1 percentage points. The sample of 750 Republicans and independents who lean Republcian has a margin of error of +/-4.3 percentage points.