August Partisan Primary - a Closer Look
Wisconsin’s 2024 August partisan primary featured no competitive races for statewide office, but it did include many competitive legislative races and two referendums on proposed amendments to the state constitution. Both referendums, which were supported by the GOP and opposed by Democrats, failed. Legislative primaries around the state returned mixed signals about the strength of incumbency, experience, and candidate endorsements.
Statewide, the two almost identical referendum questions lost, with just over 57% of voters casting a “no” ballot for each measure. They failed by a similar margin (about 56% “no”) in the 4-county Milwaukee metro.
Besides the statewide referendums, each voter could also choose the partisan primary of their choice. The incentives to participate in a party’s primary can vary a lot from place to place, as sometimes only one party offers contested races. However, the balance of party participation in the August 2024 primary came fairly close to the balance of support for each party in the last November election.
How zoning reform could reverse population loss in many Milwaukee neighborhoods
Lots of people want to live in Washington Heights—the Milwaukee neighborhood sandwiched between Washington Park to the east and Wauwatosa to the west. The median home price grew by $92,000 (53%) from 2019 to 2023, nearly double the citywide increase of $48,000.[i] Average rents grew by 16% in the past two years alone, double the national increase of 8%.[ii]
Despite this, Washington Heights is shrinking. The neighborhood’s population fell from 7,200 in 2000 to 6,741 in 2010 and 6,360 in 2020. That is a 12% drop in 20 years.
The reasons are not complicated. The number of households has stayed about the same, but the average household size has fallen from 2.47 in 2000 to 2.36 in 2010 and 2.22 in 2020. Families are having fewer children, and more adults are living alone.
Imagine a typical block with 32 single-family homes (16 lots on each side of the street). In 2000, that block had 79 residents, it had 76 in 2010, and 71 in 2020. Across many blocks, these small changes add up quickly.
Continue reading here.
Introducing the Lubar Center’s New Tool for Accessing Wisconsin Election Data
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.
School Enrollment Changes and Recent Birth Trends
Many things affect a school (or district’s) enrollment, but the most important is simply how many children live there.
In Milwaukee, recent birth trends point to a future of dwindling class sizes, beginning in elementary school and working their way up through the higher grades. Absent a spike in the birth rate or a big change in migration, the three sectors—district, charter, and private—will find themselves fighting over a shrinking pie.
Across the 1990s, the number of babies born fell by 13%. Then, the trend stabilized, even growing slightly, until the Great Recession. 773 fewer babies were born in 2010 than 2009, and annual declines continued after that. From 2009 to 2019, the number of births fell by 17%.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a drop in births similar to the Great Recession a decade prior. Births fell by 540 in 2020, 439 in 2021, and 358 in 2022. Losses stabilized in 2023, when the preliminary count shows 7,905 births, still 14% lower than prior to the pandemic.
Wisconsin Population Changes
The official census count occurs just once every ten years, and it’s out of date by the time it gets released.
The last census was officially conducted on April 1, 2020, so it missed essentially all the population changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But each year, the U.S. Census Bureau also releases “intercensal” population estimates. These are based on carefully collected administrative records (births, deaths, tax returns, etc.), and they give us the best look at how our current population is changing. The estimates cover 12-month periods beginning on July 1. The latest data covers the year from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023.
Results of the 2023 Supreme Court race in the Milwaukee Metro
The election results from the Milwaukee metro reveal the breadth of Janet Protasiewicz’s landslide victory in the 2023 WI Supreme Court election. Liberal candidates (Protasiewicz and Everett) won the 4-county area by 2.6 points (51.3% of the two-party vote) during the February primary. Protasiewicz won the general election by 12.1 points in the 4 counties.
WI Assembly Outcomes Under Selected Maps
In the November 2022 election, Republican Assembly candidates carried 64 of the 99 districts, increasing their share of the chamber by 2 seats.
Democrats won the other 35 seats. A Lubar Center analysis concludes that Democratic candidates most likely would’ve won 36 seats under the previous decade’s boundaries, 39 seats under the “least change” map proposed by Governor Evers, and 43 seats under the final map submitted by the People’s Map Commission (PMC).
City of Milwaukee Voter Turnout Trends
Was Milwaukee’s 2022 election turnout low or high? You can spin a story either way, depending on the baseline you choose. This post considers turnout trends in presidential and gubernatorial elections since 1972.
Wisconsin Redistricting Plans
The original version of this memo included all the plans submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in December 2021. On January 10th, 2022, the Court accepted corrected versions of the Assembly and Senate redistricting plans submitted by Governor Evers and BLOC. This memo has been updated to include these small corrections from Evers and BLOC. The changes were mostly designed to improve plan conformity with current municipal boundaries. Compared with the original submission, Evers’ corrections changed the Assembly district of 339 residents and the Senate district of 275. BLOC’s corrections change the Assembly district of 245 residents and the Senate district of 161.
Continue reading at https://rpubs.com/jdjohn215/redistricting-plans-submitted-to-scowis
Milwaukee Housing Trends
This report continues the Lubar Center’s focus on the state of Milwaukee’s housing. Previous installments have documented the end of the residency requirement for city workers, the collapse in owner occupancy following the Great Recession, increased investment by out-of-state landlords, and high-frequency eviction by large corporate landlords.
Our latest study reveals something new. Since 2018, homeownership has begun rebounding across Milwaukee. No other four-year period since our data begins in 1990 has seen an increase in homeownership this large. At the same time, several private equity backed out-of-state investors have also rapidly expanded their holdings. They focus on lower-priced houses in specific neighborhoods, putting them in direct competition with the would-be home buyers already living there.
Continue reading at http://milwaukeehousingstats.info/
Barrett's Electoral History
Beginning with the 2004 spring mayoral primary, Milwaukee voters had the opportunity to vote for Tom Barrett or somebody else nine times.1 The maps below show (1) the wards which voted for Barrett in any of those elections and (2) the wards which Barrett always won.
Continue reading at https://rpubs.com/jdjohn215/Tom-Barrett-Milwaukee-Mayor-Electoral-History