Winning big and losing small. How Tammy Baldwin's electoral formula makes her a tough target for Republicans
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The last time Tammy Baldwin ran for re-election, she did something unheard of in today’s insanely competitive battleground of Wisconsin.
She won a big November election in a romp.
Baldwin routed her Republican U.S. Senate challenger by almost 11 points in 2018.
That stands as Wisconsin’s only double-digit statewide victory in a partisan election since 2010 and the only one for U.S. Senate since 2006.
As Baldwin begins her race for a third term, her unusual election history is comforting for Democrats and intimidating for Republicans.
A third decisive victory in 2024 would make her the most proficient Wisconsin vote-getter of this polarized era.
What stands out about Baldwin’s two Senate campaigns isn’t just her victory margins of 5.6 points in 2012 and 10.8 points in 2018.
It’s her exceptional competitiveness on the other side’s turf.
In an age when the performance of Democratic candidates has collapsed among rural voters, she has defied that trend. Her ability to do so is unique among recent Wisconsin Democrats.
While Baldwin lost the rural vote in both of her races, she lost it by much smaller margins than others in her party, making it impossible for Republicans to offset her massive advantage in more populous places.
One way to measure this is to combine the votes in Wisconsin’s more than 1,200 towns. These communities make up almost a third of the statewide turnout. Because towns are much less densely populated than the state’s cities and villages, they represent a good approximation of Wisconsin’s rural electorate.
That electorate began to swing hard against Democrats in 2010 when Republican Scott Walker was first elected governor. The pattern has continued through almost every contest for governor, senator and president.
Based on the combined “town vote,” Democrats lost rural Wisconsin for governor by 23 points in 2010, 25 points in 2014, 23 points in 2018 and 24 points in 2022. They lost the rural vote for president by 25 points in both 2016 and 2020. In the contests for Wisconsin’s other U.S. Senate seat, held by Republican Ron Johnson, Democrats lost the rural vote by 22 points in 2010, 25 points in 2016 and 29 points in 2022.
But in her own Senate races, Baldwin lost the “town vote” by just 11 points in 2012 and 12 points in 2018. The only other Democrat who has been that competitive in rural Wisconsin during this time was President Barack Obama in 2012.
Baldwin has outperformed her party with rural voters despite being a “Madison liberal,” a problematic political identity in many regions of the state. (She has the 6th most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate, according to a rating system widely used by political scientists).
How has she managed this?
Part of the answer is good fortune.
In 2012, she had Obama at the top of the ticket; he carried the state by almost 7 points.
She was also helped by a hotly contested GOP primary that left her challenger, former governor Tommy Thompson, temporarily out of cash and unable to withstand a withering wave of attack ads portraying him as a D.C. influence peddler.
In 2018, she had Donald Trump in the White House, which boosted the mid-term fortunes of Democrats nationally. Baldwin benefited, too, from drawing a weak and underfunded GOP challenger, suburban state lawmaker Leah Vukmir.
But good politicians take advantage of their circumstances.
Baldwin proved an effective campaigner in both races. In her first race, she comfortably defeated the state’s most successful Republican politician of modern times, a man elected governor four straight times in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2018, she was politically strong enough that she didn’t attract a top-tier opponent. She was on the same Democratic ticket as winning gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers, but Baldwin’s winning margin was almost 10 points bigger than his.
Part of that political strength was Baldwin’s focus on areas of Wisconsin outside Milwaukee and Madison and on themes that resonate well beyond the Democratic base, from “buy American” mandates to the state’s dairy and “ag” economy. Baldwin set out to define herself for rural and blue-collar voters more through economic issues or parochial Wisconsin causes than national culture-war issues.
Through some combination of factors — time and effort on the ground, campaign strategy, a non-divisive persona, a brand of economic populism, attention to home-state interests (including business interests) as a member of the Senate appropriations committee, and the vulnerabilities of her opponents — Baldwin has charted her own political map.
Baldwin has performed better than other Democrats in red areas
In geographic terms, she has over-achieved the most in places where her party has lost the most political ground — in western, northern and northeastern Wisconsin:
Democrats lost the northern Wisconsin media market of Wausau by an average of 18 points in the last two races for president and 16 points in the last three races for governor. Baldwin lost the Wausau TV market by just 3 points in 2018 and won it by 1 point in 2012.
Democrats lost the northeastern Green Bay media market by an average of 17 points in the last two races for president and by 17 points in the last three races for governor. Baldwin lost it by just 3 points in 2018 and 4 points in 2012.
Democrats lost the western Wisconsin media market of La Crosse by an average of 1 point in the past three races for governor and by 5 points in the last two races for president. But Baldwin won this region by 7 points in 2012 and 13 points in 2018.
Comparing Baldwin’s performance to that of fellow Democrat Evers in 2018, she did better in every region of the state. But the smallest gap between them was in her ultra-blue home county of Dane, and the biggest gap was in small counties across northern and western Wisconsin.
The capsule history of the two Baldwin Senate elections is that she won big on Democratic turf and lost small on Republican turf, which is a formula for dominance.
Where does this leave Baldwin going into the 2024 cycle, when she has yet to draw a serious GOP challenge?
On one level, she can’t afford to take too much for granted.
Her polling numbers haven’t been spectacular, reflecting Wisconsin’s close partisan divide. Combining the Marquette Law School’s seven statewide surveys last year, 39% of registered voters viewed her favorably, 37% viewed her unfavorably and 24% lacked an opinion.
She faces the potential drag at the top of the ticket of a Democratic president, Joe Biden, who has had consistently negative job ratings.
But on another level, Baldwin is positioned quite well.
Republicans aren’t clamoring to take her on. While they have plenty of time in theory to field a challenger, one front-line option, Green Bay congressman Mike Gallagher, said recently he won’t run.
It’s a very open question right now how strong a candidate the party will muster.
Nationally, Republicans have several more enticing targets than Wisconsin in 2024, including Democratic Senate seats in red West Virginia, red Montana and red Ohio. By contrast, Wisconsin’s other senator, Johnson, was the Democrats’ top national target among Senate GOP incumbents last year.
The Supreme Court’s 2022 abortion ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has mobilized Democratic voters and created political headaches for GOP candidates.
And so has former president Donald Trump, now seeking the Republican nomination amid serious legal peril.
The Trump Era has been a relative election boon to Democrats in Wisconsin, with the party capturing most of the key statewide contests that have taken place since Trump arrived in the White House in 2017.
That broad political trend, combined with the size and shape of her own past victories, leaves Baldwin in a much stronger position than you might expect for a U.S. senator in a 50/50 state running on the same ticket as an unpopular president.
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: Tammy Baldwin electoral formula makes her tough target for Republicans
