By Joe Handrick

An Exclusive Special Analysis for Dairyland Sentinel

Heading into the 2024 elections, Assembly Republicans in Wisconsin had a long streak on the line in which they (as a group) over-performed the top of the ticket.  

Did this streak continue in 2024?

The answer is yes.  It also is true that GOP candidates in the State Senate and Congress (with one exception) also performed well compared to Donald Trump. 

Let’s dig in.

State Assembly

There were 54 Republicans elected to the Wisconsin Assembly on November 5th. Of that group, 49 had a one-on-one match up with a Democrat and 48 of them out-performed Donald Trump as a percentage of the two-party vote. Only 1 Republican winner had a two-party percentage below that of Trump. 

Democratic winners, on the other hand, were split between those who out-performed Harris (11 of 30) and those who under-performed Harris (16 of 30). These results are outlined in the chart below. 

It is not unusual for incumbents to out-perform a non-incumbent. What is impressive about the Assembly GOP numbers is that the list of 48 winning GOP assembly candidates who out-polled President Donald Trump includes non-incumbents. 

Not surprisingly, GOP incumbents did better than GOP non-incumbents. Assembly GOP incumbents who were re-elected out-performed Trump by an average of 2.6%. Perhaps more impressively, the winning non-incumbent Republicans out-polled Trump by an average of 1.9%. 

Democratic Assembly incumbents did not fare nearly as well. Winning Democratic incumbents only averaged 0.1% better than Vice President Kamala Harris. The non-incumbent Democrats who won their elections averaged 0.8% worse than Harris. 

State Senate

All of the GOP wins in the state senate involved GOP incumbents (Democrats won all the OPEN districts and beat two GOP incumbents). In the races the GOP did win, their candidate out-performed Trump by 2%. 

Democrats had only 1 incumbent with opposition, and he managed to out-poll Harris by 1%. In the OPEN districts, the Democratic candidates under-performed Harris just slightly – by an average of 0.2%

Congress

4 of 5 incumbent GOP congressmen from Wisconsin out-performed Donald Trump. The exception was Derrick Van Order from CD 03 who polled 2.3% worse than Trump. 

Wisconsin’s two Democratic congressional representatives polled slightly above Harris. 

A Republican won the OPEN 8th district and did just a bit worse than Trump – 0.8% below Trump. 

It’s not surprising that the best performances relative to Trump were in the three districts (CD 05, 06, and 01 — especially CD05) that share Milwaukee suburbs. Trump has long struggled with suburban voters. The GOP congressional delegation average was 1.9 percent better than Trump (the average clearly brought down by CD 03). 

Incumbent performance – Average

The chart below compares how the incumbents from the six groups performed relative to their respective top of the ticket. 

What to Make of All This?

First, credit should be given to where credit is due — to those candidates who out-performed the head of their ticket. In some cases this was necessary for those candidates to be able to win. A number of Assembly Republicans won districts that were carried by Harris (this includes incumbents Jesse Rodriguez, Bob Donovan, and Todd Novak as well as newcomer Benjamin Franklin in AD  88 and oldcomer/newcomer Dean Kaufert in AD 53). One Democrat (Steve Doyle in AD 94) won a Trump district. 

Beyond that, the numbers do reflect the fact that there were a number of Republican voters who supported the GOP ticket but couldn’t find a way to vote for Trump. This explains both the relatively strong performance of GOP winners compared to Trump and the weaker performance of Democratic winners compared to Harris (they are really both sides of the same coin). 

While this could lead some to suggest that another GOP candidate would have done better than Trump, I would not make that assertion. Clearly there are voters who turned out and voted for GOP candidates on the ballot except for Trump — and it’s true that many of those may well have voted for a Republican for president too had it not been Trump. But it is also clear that Trump drew other voters out to vote (for him and in many instances for the rest of the ticket) who may not have voted if Trump was not the nominee. 

So, while it may sound like a contradiction to assert the following, both may be true: Trump’s loss of non-Trump Republicans (particularly in suburbs) may be why the election was so close, AND Trump’s appeal to non-traditional voters (particularly in rural areas) may be why he won.