Donald Trump on the campaign trail in liberal Dane County? Here's why

Republican Donald Trump's visit to deep blue Dane County on Tuesday raises an obvious political question.

Why should Trump get to a point where the GOP is not only routinely slaughtered, but losing even more decisively in every new election?

The simple answer is that anything Republicans can do to do a little less poorly in Wisconsin's second-largest — and fastest-growing — county could improve their chances of winning that state in November.

For any political party, winning the national popular vote is not just about carrying “peppy” purple seats. And it's not just about increasing the score on friendly ground.

It's also about losing enemy turf less.

Dane County is not just increasingly This is unfriendly territory for Republicans, but his electoral influence continues to grow.

From 2000 to 2020, the total number of statewide presidential votes in Wisconsin increased by 27%. But the vote in Dane County increased by almost double — 48%.

The combination of size, high voter turnout, population growth and increasing Democratic vote share makes Dane County arguably the Republicans' biggest problem on the Wisconsin political map.

More:Kamala Harris' rally aims to unleash the voting power of liberal bastion Madison in Wisconsin

That was the subject of a story I wrote in early 2018, in which I noted that these trends were changing the political math in Wisconsin.

Since then, the numbers have only gotten worse.

In the Clinton election of the 1990s, Democrats won Dane County by about 50,000 presidential votes.

In the Bush elections in the 2000s, Democrats won Denmark by an average of about 80,000 votes.

In the 2008 and 2012 Obama elections, the Democrats beat Dane by around 130,000 votes.

With Hillary Clinton as the party's nominee in 2016, the Democrats won by about 146,000 votes over Denmark.

And with Joe Biden as the nominee in 2020, Democrats won by more than 180,000 votes over Dane.

This 181,327 vote margin in 2020 had the net effect of increasing the Democrats' statewide lead by 5.5 percentage points (in a state decided by 0.6 percentage points). The increase in the Democratic vote margin in Denmark from 2016 to 2020 alone was enough to turn Wisconsin from red to blue.

These trend lines have led some GOP strategists to question why their party isn't doing more to reduce Danes' deficit (former Gov. Tommy Thompson has been vocal on this point). In other words, are there things Republicans can do — campaign visits, campaign efforts, time, attention, messaging — to try to lose a little less?

That seems to be the logic behind Trump's visit to Waunakee this week, followed by a visit to very blue Milwaukee the same day.

As blue as it is, the village of Waunakee is actually one of the less one-sided communities in Dane. Trump lost it by 28 points in 2020 — about half his national losing margin.

But recent trend lines make clear just how big a challenge Trump faces in this part of the state.

Not only does Dane historically have a very liberal political culture, but demographic trends reinforce this. It has one of the highest levels of education in the state, and nationally, college graduates trend away from the Republican Party. Vice President Kamala Harris gathered a crowd of more than 10,000 people at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison less than two weeks ago.

More:Both vice presidential candidates are from the Great Lakes. What does this mean for the region?

Trump's brand of Republicanism also didn't sit well with the capital and college town of Madison and its suburbs.

After losing Dane by 47 points in 2016, Trump lost him by almost 53 points in 2020.

And the broader trend of increasing Democratic voting power in Denmark is occurring with great predictability across different election cycles and races for different offices, a pattern that occurred before Trump but has been very pronounced in the Trump era.

In gubernatorial elections, Republicans lost Dane by about 81,000 votes in 2010, by about 102,000 in 2014, by about 151,000 in 2018 and by about 174,000 votes in 2022.

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson lost Dane by 88,000 votes in 2010, 140,000 in 2016 and nearly 164,000 in 2022.

Even in the nonpartisan state Supreme Court elections in April, the trend line is the same. The margin of victory for liberal judicial candidates has increased from 30,000 or 40,000 to 80,000 or 90,000 votes over the past two decades and to more than 150,000 votes in the last major judicial contest in 2023. This is bigger than Trump's defeat presidential margin in the county eight years ago.

Unless this trajectory suddenly changes, Trump will lose an even more populous Dane County with even more votes than in 2020 (and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will do even better in Dane than Biden did four years ago).

But at the same time, there will undoubtedly be other places in Wisconsin where Trump wins by larger margins than last time.

Donald Trump on the campaign trail in liberal Dane County? Here's why

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