What the 2024 Election Tells Us About Wisconsin Voters

During the runup leading to 2024 presidential, the Marquette Law poll ran four surveys of Wisconsin voters. One question asked who the voter would vote for: Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump.

In many cases expressed preferences varied widely depending on what groups respondents belonged to. Perhaps most attention was caught by the stark differences in preferences between men and women. As the graph below shows, 57% of the men making the choice preferred Trump, compared to 41% of women.

 

There are a number of similar examples:

• Age: Young voters were most favorable to Dems. By contrast, those aged 45 to 59 were most favorable to Trump.

• Education: college graduates were most favorable to Harris

• Religion: born-again Christians were overwhelmingly supportive of Trump. There was little difference between Catholics and mainline Protestants. The strongest support for Harris came from those who said they had no religion.

By contrast, income accounted for little of the difference between preferences for candidates.

During the course of the campaign, numerous polls were published by many organizations. Several sites also appeared that combined the individual poll results. These agglomeration sites weighted some polls more heavily than others, based on their judgement as to the quality of the individual polls.

At the beginning of September, October, and November, I averaged the results of five agglomerated sites (The New York Times, the Washington Post, Real Clear Politics, 538, and Nate Silver). The result is shown by the graph below, for the nation and seven competitive states. Following the election, I added the initial results, shown in blue.

In September, polls suggest that Harris had a small advantage nationally and in Wisconsin and most of the other competitive states, but the differences are very small and not statistically significant. As the campaign progressed, polls become less favorable, leading to her loss nationally and in all seven of the states.

In attempting to explain Harris’ loss, a number of commentators have pointed to the short time that she had to introduce herself. Yet as time passed, her polling nationally, and in Wisconsin and the other competitive states, became less positive and more negative. That continued right into election day, the results suggest.

In the end, Wisconsin lived up to its reputation as a highly competitive state. In fact, based on the percentage difference between winner and loser, it could justifiably be considered as the nation’s most competitive state.

During the campaign, the Marquette poll asked voters what they considered the most important issue. As shown in the next graph, the economy was rated as the most important issue by 39% of the respondents. The was followed by abortion at 15% and immigration and border security at 13%.

The next graph breaks down those results by party affiliation. Some 53% of Republicans chose the economy as their most important issue. Add in immigration and 79% of Republicans chose one or the other of those two issues.

By contrast, Democrats’ response was scattered among five issues. Abortion policy was chosen by the largest number of Democrats, followed closely by the economy.

By most measures, including the growth of jobs, the very low unemployment rate, strong gross domestic product (GDP), and increasing real wages, the Biden and Harris economy was among the strongest the nation has enjoyed. Why then were so many voters negative when talking about “the economy”? It appears that the rise in prices dominated when assessing the economy.