A game-changing moment for Wisconsin Democrats. New maps put legislative majorities within reach

MADISON – With the stroke of a pen, Tony Evers on Monday became the first Democrat in 13 years to achieve a long-elusive goal of the party: to win back political capital in the Wisconsin statehouse.

Democrats have, since 2011, been unable to climb out of a deep minority in the state Legislature cemented when Republicans drew and passed legislative maps that were considered by redistricting experts to be some of the most gerrymandered electoral boundaries in the nation, delivering massive majorities in both houses for more than a decade.

That changed Monday when the Democratic governor signed into law a bill Republican lawmakers begrudgingly passed that implement new legislative maps drawn by Evers.

The significance of the moment for Democrats is immense — creating competitive districts across the state and giving the party a chance to secure a majority for the first time in years.

"This is an extraordinary moment. I am floating," Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman Ben Wikler said after Evers signed the new maps into law. "For voters, for the last 13 years … their vote in the state Legislature was usually symbolic and now it actually has power."

Not all Democrats were satisfied.

All but two Democratic lawmakers voted against the maps, hoping the Wisconsin Supreme Court would step in and deliver the party even more favorable boundaries. On Monday, just four Democratic lawmakers stood by as Evers signed into law a plan the party has sought for years.

"To me the decision to enact these maps boils down to this: I made a promise to the people of Wisconsin that I would always try to do the right thing," Evers said at a press conference Monday in the state Capitol. "Keeping that promise, to me, matters most, even if members of my own party disagree with me."

Former Democratic lawmakers say Evers' maps will fundamentally shift lawmakers' behavior and priorities.

"I taught history and I taught government and I always taught about how compromise was the way government should work and unfortunately, in my time in the Legislature, I never saw that happen," said Don Vruwink, a former Democratic member of the Assembly who was first elected in 2016 and lost re-election in 2022.

"We would probably get more crossover votes and more compromise because one side isn't going to dominate the conversation all the time. And I think that's what we need," Vruwink, 70, said in an interview. "As a state, that's what we need in order to to get good policy, because right now there's a lot of pressure on representatives and senators to vote the party line."

Adopting Evers' maps is good news for Democrats even if the changes aren't likely to deliver as many wins for the party as others the court considered, said Dave Hansen, a Green Bay Democrat who served in the state Senate from 2001-2021.

"If we can have more representative government, more fair government, I think it's about doing the right thing," Hansen, 76, said in an interview. "I know the governor is in a tough position and some Dems want the perfect, which probably will never happen, but … it's much better."

Lawmakers got along better and worked more effectively in the early 2000s when partisan margins were tighter, Hansen said, adding, "we had the ability to take each other's ideas and work with them." Hansen argued the state is "not as red as the Legislature is," noting that most statewide elected offices are currently held by Democrats.

Rick Esenberg, president and chief counsel of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, disputed the notion that the outcomes of legislative elections should align perfectly with the results of statewide elections — in other words, Democrats winning a majority statewide offices would not guarantee Democrats holding a majority of seats in the Legislature.

More: In a 50/50 Wisconsin electorate, what does a 'neutral' election map look like?

"Whether the aggregate outcome of all those elections match the vote in statewide partisan elections will depend on the political geography of the state. There is no reason to assume that they ought to match," Esenberg said. "If, in an evenly divided state, one party’s voters are more concentrated than the other's, they won’t match even if the maps are drawn without regard to partisanship. There’s really no question that this is the case in Wisconsin."

When Gordon Hintz, a Democrat who served in the Assembly from 2007-2023 and as Assembly Minority Leader from 2017-2022, first took office, Republicans held 52 seats to Democrats' 47 in the Assembly. The Senate had an 18-15 Democratic majority.

In that environment, Hintz said, lawmakers needed votes from people in the political center — making general elections just as, if not more important than, partisan primaries.

"In that time, you saw people in the middle being able to effectively govern," Hintz, 50, said in an interview. "You saw people that were worried about votes they were going to be taking because of the results of what would happen in the general election, not just in legislative primaries, and you saw that the majority couldn't just steamroll the minority."

See the new state Assembly districts

This map shows Wisconsin state Assembly districts under the previous 2022 map on the left, and the new 2024 map on the right. Each district is colored according to whether itleans Democrat, leans Republican, or is acompetitive district (within 5%).

Old maps (2022)

New maps (2024)

Note: The partisan lean of districts is calculated based on voting data from national and local elections from 2016 to 2022. Districts with less than 5% difference in Republican and Democratic votes are considered competitive districts.

Map by Andrew Hahn and Eva Wen / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Under the current Republican-drawn maps, Republicans hold 64 of 99 Assembly seats and 22 of 33 Senate seats.

The 99 Assembly districts drawn by Evers are about evenly split between Republican and Democratic-leaning districts. Forty-five districts are more Democratic than Republican, and 46 districts are more Republican than Democratic.

That leaves eight districts that are more likely to be a toss-up between Democrats and Republicans.

See the new state Senate districts

This map shows Wisconsin state Senate districts under the previous 2022 map on the left, and the new 2024 map on the right. Each district is colored according to whether itleans Democrat, leans Republican, or is acompetitive district (within 5%).

Old maps (2022)

New maps (2024)

Note: The partisan lean of districts is calculated based on voting data from national and local elections from 2016 to 2022. Districts with less than 5% difference in Republican and Democratic votes are considered competitive districts.

Map by Andrew Hahn and Eva Wen / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In the state Senate, the districts drawn by Evers are also about evenly split between Republican and Democratic-leaning districts. Fourteen districts out of 33 are Democratic-leaning, while 15 districts are Republican-leaning.

The other four districts are competitive, where either party has a fair chance of winning them.

The shift doesn't guarantee an "instant Democratic majority," Hintz said, "but what you should see is more competitive general election races and much closer majorities."

"That should change how the institution is governed," he said.

Michigan and Minnesota — two Midwestern states where Democrats took control in 2022 for the first time in many years — could serve as examples of what Wisconsin Democrats would do with a legislative majority, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university's Elections Research Center.

Democrats in those states have "eagerly legislated in new directions on issues such as criminal justice and environmental protection," Burden said. Given the chance, Wisconsin Democrats would likely pursue a variety of policy changes unavailable to them under GOP control, he said.

"Among the most immediate actions would be expanding Medicaid coverage through the (Affordable Care Act) and decriminalizing at least some marijuana use. Democrats have been eager to do both of these things and Wisconsin is an outlier among Midwestern states for not having done either yet," Burden said.

"There might also be interest in other reforms such as increasing the minimum wage, expanding support for child care, and addressing gun violence, all issues that Gov. Evers has asked the Republican-controlled Legislature to address without success."

The new maps are the latest domino to fall for Republicans since 2016, when former President Donald Trump took office and transformed the GOP into an electorate based more in rural areas than the Milwaukee suburbs. Coupled with a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats have prevailed in every statewide race since 2016 except three.

One such race was for state Supreme Court in 2023. Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge from Milwaukee, defeated former conservative state Supreme Court justice Dan Kelly on a platform focused on abortion access and the state's legislative maps.

As a result, control of the state Supreme Court flipped to liberals for the first time in years. The liberal majority on the court ruled in December the legislative maps that favor the GOP were unconstitutional and ordered new maps that the justices said they would draw if lawmakers and Evers could not find a solution.

This pushed Republican lawmakers to take an unprecedented vote to pass new maps weakening their power.

Republicans "were obviously terrified of what the court would do and were trying to cut their losses," WILL's Esenberg said. "Personally, I think it would have been better for the Court to decide and then justify their choice. But litigants settle all of the time and that is effectively what this was."

"Republicans will surely campaign this fall warning voters not to grant Democrats full control over state government," Burden said. "That kind of message is easier to pull off in the context of a gubernatorial race where one office is the focus. In a busy presidential election year with dozens of state legislative seats on the ballot, a message promoting divided government is not likely to have much effect."

Recruiting Democratic candidates has been "incredibly hard" under the current maps, Hintz said, "because people that you talk to say, 'Well, how am I going to win a seat if it's 64% Republican?'"

"I think once these maps are signed, you're going to see … a lot more people that are willing to put their name on the ballot because they think they've actually got a shot at winning," Hintz said.

Vruwink, who was appointed by Evers as the state's railroad commissioner, said a more competitive map will likely result in more candidates who are "middle of the road," or are not fierce partisans, and who more willing to compromise.

"Pure democracy is compromise and not getting everything you want, but getting some of what you want," Vruwink said. "And to me, that's how government should operate."

Editor's note: The Journal Sentinel based its analysis of the districts on precinct-level voting data calculated by Dave's Redistricting App based on national and local elections from 2016 to 2022. The Journal Sentinel defined districts that are 5% more Democratic than Republican as Democratic-leaning and vice versa. Districts where there is a less than 5% difference in the number of Republican and Democratic votes are considered competitive districts.

Andrew Hahn and Eva Wen of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

Molly Beck and Jessie Opoien can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com and jessie.opoien@jrn.com.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Democrats see path to majorities with end of GOP gerrymander