Was Wisconsin’s Presidential Primary a ‘Huge Success’ For Trump?

We are in the midst of the season of political fundraising emails. In my experience they tend to favor one of two themes. The first is the message of gloom and doom: our opponent is way outraising us and without your donation all is lost. “We’re coming down to the wire here. With only 220 days until election day and our end-of-quarter deadline looming, we need your help and we need it now.” Based on a nonrandom sample of fundraising appeals, I would conclude that the first strategy is the approach preferred by most Democratic campaigns, but both sides use it.

The second is the incipient victory message: our opponent is outgunned on all fronts, and we just need your contribution to push us over the finish line. An analysis of the recent election results, courtesy of the Wisconsin Republican Party, follows the second script:

The April 2 Presidential Primary Election was a huge success for the Republican Party! Wisconsinites from all over the state showed up to voice their frustration with the Biden Administration and set a positive tone for the upcoming 2024 election. There were over 20,000 more votes cast in the Republican primary than the Democrat primary, and President Trump received 200,000 more primary votes in 2024 than he received in 2016. Lastly, 11 percent of Democrat voters voted for a candidate other than Joe Biden, including 8 percent that voted uninstructed.

The analysis from the WisGOP makes three points. All are technically accurate but misleading:

1. There were over 20,000 more votes cast in the Republican primary than the Democrat primary.

As the left-hand pair of graphs on the next graph shows, over 23,000 more voters participated in the Republican primary (shown in red) than in the Democratic primary (shown in blue). However, left unmentioned is that Biden received over 35,000 more votes in the Democratic primary than Donald Trump received in the Republican primary, as shown by the pair of columns on the right.

2. President Trump received 200,000 more primary votes in 2024 than he received in 2016.

There are two problems with this claim. The first is with the math. The next graph compares the results of the last three Wisconsin Republican primaries, in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Trump (shown in red) did indeed receive more votes this year than in 2016—but by about 89,000, not the 200,000 claimed by Team WisGOP.

Second, the 2016 Wisconsin primary is not a good baseline. By the time of the 2016 Wisconsin primary, Trump still had two active opponents, John Kasich and Ted Cruz. Trump actually lost Wisconsin to Cruz in the Republican primary.

A better comparison is with the 2020 Republican primary. As with this year’s primary, Trump had already locked down the nomination. Yet Trump received about 140,000 fewer votes this year than he did in 2020.

3. 11 percent of Democrat voters voted for a candidate other than Joe Biden, including 8 percent that voted uninstructed.

The next graph compares the results of the Democratic and Republican primaries. It is true that eleven percent of Democratic voters voted for someone other than Biden. Not mentioned is that 21% of Republican voters chose someone other than Trump, even though all these candidates had already withdrawn from the primary.

Except for the claim that Trump received 200,000 more votes this year then he did in 2016, all of Team WisGOP’s claims are correct technically. However, they show strong evidence of cherry picking, choosing those facts that support the shaky thesis that “the April 2 Presidential Primary Election was a huge success for the Republican Party!”

It is easy to reorganize the data in a fashion that supports the opposite conclusion, that the primary election was a huge success for the Democratic Party. Evidence in favor of this thesis includes the decline in Trump’s vote compared the 2020 primary, Biden’s vote total compared to Trump’s, and the greater number of non-Trump voters in the Republican primary compared to the non-Biden voters in the Democratic primary.

The victims of this cherry picking are the people targeted by these email messages–members and supporters of the Republican Party. Apparently, Team WisGOP has concluded those folks don’t mind being fooled.