This month’s resounding liberal victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race will echo through Badger State politics for years to come. With liberals in charge for the first time since 2008, the possible policy consequences go on and on, from abortion to gerrymandering to union labor. National Democrats are also thrilled with how Janet Protasiewicz pulled off her 11-point victory – a margin well above pre-election predictions. Indeed, a quick glance at the wining map reveals a liberal coalition unusual by modern electoral standards.
“Judge Janet” carried not only the usual Democratic bastions of Milwaukee and Madison, but swaths of Wisconsin’s low-population, agricultural south and west. The urban-rural divide — so predictive in national politics today — was far less visible in Tuesday’s court race. Protasciewicz’s win was far more reminiscent of Obama’s 2012 Midwestern romp than Biden’s narrow, suburban-driven victory eight years later. Returning to the Democratic column in 2023 was the little-studied, but critically important, Driftless Area.
Curving along the western border of Wisconsin, the Driftless Area is aptly named for its historical lack of glacial drift. Never smoothed by ice eons ago, the region is home to undulating hills, forested ridges, and winding river valleys – a far cry from the plains and highlands of eastern Wisconsin. In the back half of the 19th century, German immigrants settled in eastern Wisconsin, an area more suitable for large-scale agriculture, while English and Scandinavian immigrants populated the Driftless region. These ancestral differences continue to play a deciding role in Wisconsin politics.
The political divide between the German and Scandinavian blocs can be traced to World War II. In 1944, though he had won by 33 points eight years prior, Franklin Roosevelt narrowly lost Wisconsin to Thomas Dewey. Driving the Dewey victory were isolationist German-Americans upset about the war and our alliance with the Soviet Union. The same voters would later become some of the most ardent supporters of infamous Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Western Wisconsinites backed Republicans, but with much smaller margins than their German-ancestry counterparts to the east.
The east-west divide was reinforced forty years later in the 1988 Bush-Dukakis election. The agricultural crisis of the mid-1980s devastated the mom-and-pop farms of the Driftless Area. After two solid Reagan victories, Wisconsin was just one of ten states to support Michael Dukakis. Ancestrally Scandinavian counties gave big margins to the Democrat, while German counties to the east, less damaged by the crisis, remained ruby red.
The blue lean of Western Wisconsin remained strong through 2012, even as other rural areas raced rightwards. In his 7-point statewide victory in 2012, Barack Obama won the Driftless Area by more than fifteen points. But four years later, in her surprise loss to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to lose the Driftless Area since Walter Mondale. Had she approached Obama’s Driftless margins, Clinton would have carried the state. Then in the April 2020 Supreme Court race another big shift took place: liberal Jill Karofsky ran up a staggering 20-point win in the Driftless counties. Six months later, however, in the November general election, many rural voters snapped back to the Republican column. Joe Biden improved on Clinton’s performance, but still lost the region 0.2 points.
Last week, Janet Protasiewicz – with a more urban coalition – returned the Driftless Area to 2012 Democratic margins. Though comparisons with presidential elections are not perfect, the liberal judge dramatically improved upon Biden’s western Wisconsin performance: every single Driftless county moved at least 14 points to the left from 2020 presidential margins, well outpacing the statewide shift of 10 points. To be sure, a comparison to the 2020 Supreme Court race, also a strong liberal win, indicates Democrats still have lost ground with rural voters. But both 2020 and 2023 suggest the region remains receptive to Democratic messaging – and is willing to reject poor GOP candidates. Even in explicitly partisan races — perhaps a better lens for assessing 2024 — Democrats like Tony Evers and Tammy Baldwin have shown they can win rural western Wisconsin voters.
Above all, however, the Driftless Area represents political opportunity for both parties. The 2024 presidential contest in Wisconsin is unlikely to be decided by more than a couple points in either direction. Every vote matters. If Joe Biden can claw back ancestrally Democratic votes in the western Scandinavian counties, as his party did last week, he will markedly improve his chances of carrying the Badger State for a second time. Meanwhile, the GOP hopes the Driftless Area further abandons its blue roots and takes on a political hue more similar to the German Catholic counties in the east. Hundreds of millions of dollars will blanket Wisconsin over the next 18 months, but few regions will be as important to track as the Driftless counties of the Upper Mississippi Valley.
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