The indispensable state: Why Wisconsin could again be the electoral 'tipping point' in 2024

Wisconsin put Republican Donald Trump over the top in the Electoral College in 2016.

Then it did the same for Democrat Joe Biden four years later.

Based on the two most recent elections, Wisconsin is the closest thing to an indispensable state in presidential politics.

By any measure, it’s one of the three or four states that matter most in 2024 and has its own special claim to being the most pivotal of all the battlegrounds.

The case for this lies in its role as the “tipping point state” in 2016 and 2020.

“Tipping point” is a concept that has gained currency among analysts as a way of capturing the relative importance of battleground states to the Electoral College outcome.

It is not a measure of the closest state in a presidential election; that was Georgia last time. It is not a measure of the state that most closely reflects the national popular vote; that was Michigan last time.

Instead, it refers to the state that pushes the winner past the finish line, supplying the final votes he or she needs to reach a majority of 270 in the Electoral College.

This is calculated by ranking every state and the District of Columbia from reddest to bluest (or vice versa) based on their popular vote margin, then identifying the state in between those poles whose electoral votes are the difference between winning and losing.

Another way of saying it: the tipping point state is the “median” electoral prize: there are an almost equal number of electoral votes to the right of that state and to the left of that state.

For example, Biden’s biggest victory margin in 2020 was 87 points in Washington, D.C. (which had 3 electoral votes), followed by 35.4 points in Vermont (3 votes), 33.5 points in Massachusetts (11 votes), 33.2 points in Maryland (10 votes), and so on. If you keep adding the electoral votes of other states that Biden carried by decreasing margins, you eventually get to Pennsylvania, which had 20 electoral votes and which Biden won by 1.2 points. That gave him 269 electoral votes, one vote shy of an outright majority.

Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes then put Biden over the top; he won it by just over six-tenths of a point.

You can do the same exercise for the 2016 election. Trump’s biggest margin was 46.3 points in Wyoming (3 electoral votes), followed by 41.7 points in West Virginia (5 votes) and 36.4 points in Oklahoma (7 votes).  If you keep adding the electoral votes of the other states Trump carried by decreasing margins, you get to Florida’s 29 votes, which Trump won by 1.2 points, giving him 260 votes.

Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes then put Trump over the top; he won it by just under eight-tenths of a point.

In both these elections, the winner won some additional states by even smaller margins than Wisconsin, padding their electoral majorities: Pennsylvania and Michigan for Trump in 2016 and Arizona and Georgia for Biden in 2020. But these states weren’t mathematically indispensable, using this “tipping point” logic. They could have been captured by the other party without changing the winner.

The website “Sabato’s Crystal Ball” recently calculated the “tipping point state” in every presidential election since 1948.

Great Lakes states are a perennial presidential battleground

It’s a list dominated by the Great Lakes states, which have for decades supplied a disproportionate share of presidential battlegrounds.  Illinois was the tipping point state in 1980; Ohio in 1968, 1972 and 2004; Michigan in 1952, 1984 and 1988; Pennsylvania in 1996; and Wisconsin in 1976, 2016 and 2020.

That’s 11 out of the past 19 presidential contests. Outside the Great Lakes region, California was the tipping point state in 1948, Florida in 1956 and 2000; Missouri in 1960; Washington state in 1964; Tennessee in 1992; and Colorado in 2008 and 2012.

Not all these states were close, because not all these national elections were close.  But these states occupied the center of the Electoral College in those presidential contests. They were the places that would have decided the presidency had the Electoral College come down to a single state.

Of course, the tipping point state isn’t the only one that matters in a close election, since there are usually other battlegrounds that differ from it only slightly in their outcomes.

To get a fuller picture of the top battlegrounds over the decades, you need to widen the lens to include states where the winning margin was close to the margin in the tipping point state.

In 2020, the outcome in six other states was within 3 points of Wisconsin’s margin: Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

Three of those states — Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania — were within 1 point of Wisconsin.

These four states are considered by some the top battlegrounds going into 2024. Some experts add Nevada to the list; some throw in Michigan, North Carolina or New Hampshire if they’re defining the playing field a little more broadly.

The caveat here is that the last election map isn’t a perfect guide to the next election map, since parties change, candidates change, and the partisan character of states change.

Colorado, the tipping point state in the two Obama elections, is now a safe Democratic state, no longer on the very front lines of the fight for the White House. Like Colorado, Virginia is a former red state that is now blue. It was only a presidential battleground as it transitioned from one to the other.

Ohio, the tipping point state in 2004, has become a safe Republican state. Its days as a presidential kingmaker are over for now.  Iowa was on average the single most competitive presidential state in the 20-year period from 1992 to 2012 but is now an unmistakably red state. It voted for Trump twice by more than 8 points.

Arizona and Georgia are currently the hottest of swing states but were reliably Republican in their presidential voting before 2016. If they keep trending Democratic, they could cease to be top battlegrounds in future elections.

These are all examples of states in political transition.

But there are some states that have persisted as battlegrounds across different political eras.

Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire and Florida have been competitive for most of the past 30 years, though in 2020 Democrats won New Hampshire by 7 points and Michigan by almost 3.  Florida, which decided the presidency by less than 600 votes in 2000, is no longer considered a toss-up state; Trump won it by more than 3 points in 2020.

The prize for the most enduring battlegrounds arguably goes to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

In addition to being the tipping point state in 1996, Pennsylvania was close to the tipping point in 1972, 1980, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020.

In addition to being the tipping point state in 1976, 2016, and 2020, Wisconsin was close to the tipping point in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2012.  It was decided by less than a single percentage point in 2000, 2004, 2016 and 2020.

The only presidential elections in the past 50 years where Wisconsin has been nowhere near the electoral tipping point were the four landslides of 1972 (won by Richard Nixon), 1984 (won by Ronald Reagan) 1988 (won by George H.W. Bush) and 2008 (won by Obama).

What explains Wisconsin's role?

In competitive national elections, it has been unfailingly relevant.

What explains Wisconsin’s staying power as a presidential battleground amid sweeping changes in the American political map?

There is no one good answer.

One explanation might lie in the fact that it hasn’t experienced the same level of demographic change as some other states, such as Arizona and Florida. It has relatively low levels of growth, of in-migration and out-migration. Yet other states with fairly static populations have dropped out of the battleground club, such as Iowa.

Another explanation involves its population mix and political culture.

It is not dominated by rural, urban or suburban voters, but has a mix of all three. It is much whiter than the nation as a whole, but white voters in Wisconsin are not as Republican as they are in many other states. It would be a redder state if whites in Wisconsin voted more like whites in Tennessee or Nebraska. And it would be a bluer state if it had more voters of color like Georgia or California.

Wisconsin’s political geography has changed a lot during the state’s long battleground run, but these changes have tended to cancel each other out in partisan terms.

Its large pool of rural and blue-collar whites has trended in a Republican direction, making northern and western Wisconsin much redder than they used to be.  But voters in suburban Madison and Milwaukee have shifted in a Democratic direction. Combined with the growth of very blue Dane County, that has kept Democrats very competitive in statewide elections.

At the same time, Wisconsin has grown a little more Republican than it used to be in its partisan makeup, and it has grown more Republican relative to the nation as a whole.

In 2000, Democrats won the national vote by five-tenths of a point and won Wisconsin by two-tenths of a point. Wisconsin was a top battleground because it so closely mirrored the national vote.

In 2020, Democrats won the national vote by 4.45 points but won Wisconsin by just six-tenths of a point. Wisconsin was the tipping point state because it was more Republican than the nation as a whole, not because it mirrored the national vote.

That reflects the Republican “bias” or advantage in the Electoral College that has emerged in the last two elections. Democrats had to win the national popular vote handily last time to eke out a very close victory in the decisive electoral states. Put another way, in order to win the Electoral College Biden had to capture at least one state that was roughly 4 points more Republican than the country as a whole.

It’s quite possible — but not certain — that Democrats will face a similar Electoral College hurdle in 2024.

What does seem certain is that Wisconsin will play the same leading role it has for most of the past 30 years: as an electoral prize madly contested by both parties and, if the election is close enough, a potential decider.

Craig Gilbert provides Wisconsin political analysis as a fellow with Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Prior to the fellowship, Gilbert reported on politics for 35 years at the Journal Sentinel, the last 25 in its Washington Bureau. His column continues that independent reporting tradition and goes through the established Journal Sentinel editing process.

Follow him on Twitter: @Wisvoter.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin could be the Electoral College 'tipping point' in 2024