Wisconsin - 2024 Election Compendium
Topic: 2024 Election Analysis
Wisconsin 2024 Presidential Election Review
Author’s Note: All 2024 Election Reviews can be found here.
Outcome
Trump +0.9% (+29,397)
Trump +2.3% (+75,855)
Preface
My strongest advice to you, before proceeding further, is to fully review my entry covering the 2024 election in Iowa. It is critical for you to understand the outcome of that election in Wisconsin’s political cousin prior to immersing yourself in this much more complex analysis, which should leap off the page to you as you observe what did not happen in the state featuring a legitimate battle for electoral votes.
Although many states make up the Democrat “blue wall,” a massive heaping of electoral votes that have been largely gone to the same party since 1992, three states in the Industrial and Upper Midwest make up what were referred to as the 2024 version of the blue wall – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Wisconsin voted to the right of the former two in both of Trump’s previous presidential runs but wound up the furthest left of the trio once all ballots were finally counted this time around.
Wisconsin is hard to poll even when pollsters aren’t busy carrying water and playing narrative control games; however, I knew the Badger State was Trump’s to lose once I saw peripheral polling data in a Trump vs. Biden race coming out of Iowa from the now humbled Ann Selzer. Trump’s lead was simply so big next door there was no possible way he could lose Wisconsin, which barely kept Trump from carrying its 10 electoral votes in 2020 by throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at him. Harris only carried 13 counties, including 8 by fewer than 1,500 votes in margin. Democrats have just two counties, Dane (which contains the state capital of Madison plus the massive University of Wisconsin) and Milwaukee, which must be maxed out to compete with the overwhelming rightward shift of the working-class counties statewide, which largely resemble Iowa’s, and give the Democrat nominee a shot at victory.
My call of Trump +2.3% was based on taking an average of my pessimistic model (which came to fruition), showing Trump carrying Wisconsin by 1.3%, and the registrations model considering Iowa’s massive GOP registration wave, showing Trump winning Wisconsin by 3.3%. This meant, despite the previous two elections winding up with Wisconsin to the right of the other two industrial “blue wall” states, that I had Wisconsin winding up furthest left of the three. That is ultimately where it wound up, but the correct order may never be known thanks to the coordinated effort to manipulate results that will be documented in the balance of this report.
Analysis
· 68 of 72 (94.4%) counties in Wisconsin shifted toward Trump in terms of percentage margin, meaning he either won them by a higher percentage than he did in 2020 (or in the case of Sauk County, flipped it), or lost them by a smaller percentage. All three of the W-O-W Counties (Washington, Ozaukee, and Waukesha), a trio of traditional GOP suburban strongholds shifted left, but by less than two points each. Door County, which juts out into Lake Michigan, moved 0.8% left. In this sense, Wisconsin’s county shifts closely parallel Iowa’s (98 of 99 to the right, or 99.0%), with 166 of 171 counties (97.1%) combined in both states moving to the right.
· With the artificially tightened margin in Wisconsin, five of the past seven presidential elections have been decided within a single point.
· Democrats cannot win the state without posting dominant margins in Milwaukee and Dane Counties combined. The chart below captures how effectively these two counties have worked in tandem for collective margin in each of Trump’s three races:
· As for the rest of the state’s vast, mostly wooded hinterlands, I expected Trump to flip Door, Green, Portage, and Sauk Counties. Thanks to likely fortification, he only flipped Sauk, but got within 466 ballots in Door, 60 in Green, and 516 in Portage (a win in Portage would have been the first GOP presidential win since Eisenhower’s in 1956), and even came within 421 ballots of a flip of Ashland County, which wasn’t on my radar. The 70 counties outside of Dane and Milwaukee delivered the requisite winning margins for Trump, outside the margin of fraud, as depicted below:
· While Harris slightly lagged Joe Biden’s statewide ballot counts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, she gained 2.2% on his 2020 count in Wisconsin (+37,363), losing the state by an eyelash despite Trump having won enough votes (1,697,626) to equal 46.4% of the state’s entire pre-Election Day voter registration count (3,658,236). Harris only lagged Biden’s ballot count in 24 of 72 counties, and had her highest raw net vote gains in Eau Claire, Brown, Waukesha, and Dane (+13,874) Counties. The map below appears to highlight where ballot harvesting rings are most likely not in operation, such as the far southwestern portion of the state that overlaps with Iowa’s demographics most closely, the far north region of the state, and in urban areas south of Milwaukee, such as Kenosha and Racine Counties, where Harris lagged Biden.
· How should things have turned out in Wisconsin? If you haven’t read my review of Iowa yet, now is a good time to do just that. While Harris lagged Biden in 24 Wisconsin counties, she didn’t lag Hillary Clinton’s 2016 ballot counts in any of the Badger’s State’s 72 counties; however, she managed to gain ballots in just 2 Iowa Counties in minuscule amounts, and lagged Clinton in 52 counties there:
· Iowa and Wisconsin, with a gap of 12.4% between the two, finished further apart than they have in any presidential election since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt beat Alf Landon in both, by 11.7% and 33.5%, respectively. The two states had been just 8.8% apart on average in the two Trump races, and curiously, Trump had a clear majority of the vote in Wisconsin when the race was called for him, suggesting he should have won the state by at least 4 points:
· The map contrasting Iowa and Wisconsin’s 2024 election shifts at the county level suggests strongly that no effort, other than Ann Selzer’s maliciously fraudulent polling, was made to prevent Iowa from morphing into a Trump superstate, while every effort was made to keep Wisconsin producing Democrat electoral votes. Like Pennsylvania and Michigan, detail from smaller counties (especially obvious when looking what happened in small Iowa counties) tells me ballot harvesting rings know exactly which registrations can be tabbed for a mail-in ballot request (561,616 mail ballots were counted this year in Wisconsin) and subsequently harvested over a lengthy return window:
· To highlight the corruption of Milwaukee County, in which Harris lost just 0.4% of Biden’s ballot count (-1,271), here are comparable figures for industrial counties in the regional working-class urban counties, which were used to analyze Harris’s performance in Macomb County, Michigan, and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which preserved most of their counterfeit 2020 ballot count:
o Erie County, NY loss of 18,169 (-7.0%)
o Cuyahoga County, OH loss of 39,792 (-9.6%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 2000
o Lucas County, OH loss of 9,091 (-7.9%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 1996
o Mahoning County, OH loss of 7,005 (-12.2%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 1932
o Marion County, IN loss of 26,053 (-10.5%)
o Lake County, IN loss of 15,784 (-12.6%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 2000
o Cook County, IL loss of 278,152 (-16.1%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 2004
Milwaukee County likely has at least 21,000 fraudulent ballots for Harris alone, assessing Erie County’s (New York) 7.0% loss only, or nearly enough to alter the outcome of the U.S. Senate race on its own.
· With no Automatic Voter Registration available to make cheating easier, elections are primarily corrupted by Same Day Voter Registration, especially in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, where early voting suggested urban and minority turnout was depressed. I presented the following data just 11 days after Election Day in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, at an event organized by the county GOP and great patriots and friends, Ann and Craig Sykora:
Turnout, until recently, has generally been expressed as votes divided by registered voters. The U.S. Census Bureau, despite its incompetence and corruption, estimates 5,910,955 people live in Wisconsin as of 2023. With 3,658,236 registered voters entering Election Day, 61.9% of Wisconsin’s total population was registered to vote, which is lower than Pennsylvania’s percentage, and far lower than Michigan’s, which isn’t even within bounds of legality. With 3,415,154 presidential ballots counted, turnout was 93.4% (3,415,154/3,658,236), which is Soviet Union-level high and not realistic. To make this number more realistic, Same Day Voter Registration alters the denominator and subsequently, the turnout, but you only find out after the fact:
Same Day Registrations
2020 219,042
2024 ~227,724 – Author’s Note: The December 2, 2024, voter registration by county count shows 3,885,960 registered voters statewide. I cannot find an official announcement outlining exactly how many same day registrations occurred, or any detail indicating removed registrations in November after the Election, but it appears same day registration in 2024 was roughly equal to 2020.
Putting the 2024 total of ballots (3,415,154) over the new denominator of 3,885,960 gives us 87.9% turnout as expressed traditionally - still very high, but not in the mid-nineties as shown before considering same day registrations. It appears nearly 50,000 same day registrations occurred in Dane and Milwaukee Counties, where Democrats desperately needed votes for Harris and their cringeworthy U.S. Senate incumbent, Tammy Baldwin.
Quality Checks
Statewide Presidential Ballot Count
· 2004 2,997,007
· 2008 2,983,417 (-13,590, -0.5%)
· 2012 3,068,434 (+85,017, +2.8%)
· 2016 2,976,150 (-92,284, -3.0%)
· 2020 3,298,041 (+321,891, +10.8%)
· 2024 3,422,918 (+124,877, +3.8%)
The ballot counts above resemble those I detailed in the Pennsylvania and Michigan compendium entries. Wisconsin could scarcely gain ballots in any election from 2004 through 2016, but has now experienced a boom in turnout that not only defies those found in similar states, but also the working-class trend in the state and the decay of Milwaukee County. The climb in ballots from 2020 to 2024 isn’t alarming, but the net increase of 446,768 ballots in two cycles is, especially since Wisconsin is on course to lose an electoral vote in the next apportionment because it isn’t gaining population relative to the rest of the country.
Key Counties
Milwaukee County
Milwaukee is a true urban cesspool that is often overlooked thanks to the overwhelming level of corruption just down the highway that can be found in Chicago. Tony Evers would have never sniffed the governorship if not for Milwaukee County, nor would Joe Biden have carried Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes. Even Eric Hovde would be getting ready to swear into the Senate if Robin Vos’s pathetic Republican majorities would have done anything in the past decade to reign in the same day registration and subsequent absentee corruption reigning in this county, which has declined more than 10% in population in a half century and contributes the most ballots in statewide elections (13.5% of the statewide count this year).
If the Republican Party had any real leadership statewide, they would invest 90% of their budget in the heart of working-class Milwaukee, implode the overwhelming Democrat minority vote share, and chip enough margin to put all pressure on Dane County to win the state. Unfortunately, they can barely win statewide races even with Donald Trump on the ticket because the same playbook is used over and over again since Democrats know they won’t be stopped from dumping overwhelming amounts of mail ballots in the wee hours of the morning after Election Night shop has closed down. Nipping same day registration would end Milwaukee’s control over statewide races, and make it as irrelevant as the once dominant Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is in the Buckeye State’s elections today.
Dane County
The state’s second-largest ballot contributor, Dane County, is another county the Wisconsin GOP allows to get away with whatever it wants, including events like 2020’s “Democracy in the Park.” Given that Dane County contains not only Madison, the seat of state government, but also the University of Wisconsin and more than 52,000 students, I see no scenario in which a statewide Republican candidate, especially a presidential nominee, will ever carry the county; therefore, the goal of the candidates here should be to not get utterly annihilated, as has been the case since 1996, when Bob Dole lost the county by 49,860 votes, up to the present, when Donald Trump is fresh off a 188,541 ballot margin trouncing. If either of Milwaukee or Dane County were to be substantially dented in terms of severity of Democrat margin, statewide Democrat victories would be all but impossible.
The unrealistic 3 to 1 Democrat margins are buoyed by mail-in ballot fraud likely tied to fraudulent registrations of college students, particularly those who have moved on and are no longer eligible to vote in Dane County. I believe this because I’ve seen the canvassing statistics in the county which show impossibly high amounts of voters supposedly registered under the same roof. Grassroots patriot Erin Yager gave me this slide three years ago::
Again, same day registration is abused here, and getting a handle on the ballot stuffing in Dane County will require a major purge of voter rolls holding excess registrations in population dense housing developments, dormitories, and apartment complexes.
Waukesha County
I am confident harvesting rings exist in the far western portion of the state nearest the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and in the northeastern portion near Green Bay (Brown County), but with urban decay like that found in Milwaukee County, misery inevitably spreads to suburban areas and counties that have been insulated from such malaise, often for many decades (ask residents of Chicago’s collar counties if you don’t believe me), which now all vote Democrat.
You’d rather be a Trump supporter in Wisconsin than a Romney/Vos/Ryan acolyte, but their brand of the GOP had the high terrain in Waukesha County, which has backed every GOP presidential nominee but one (Goldwater in 1964) since 1940. In 2012, Mitt Romney won it by the largest vote margin ever, at +84,019. Since then, for Trump:
2016 +63,319
2020 +55,743
2024 +54,290
Now, I don’t believe the Democrats, who have run from 78,779 ballots for Barack Obama in 2012 to 108,478 for Kamala Harris, a jump that previously took them from 1984 through 2012 to make, are producing 100% fraud-free returns, but Trump has fewer ballots (just 30, but still fewer) than Mitt Romney had 12 years ago, despite modest growth and a population of 406,978 per the latest census.
With next-door neighbor Milwaukee County continuing to lose population, some to other states and others to more promising counties with better long-term outlooks, it is imperative that the GOP slide in Waukesha County be stopped, especially since the rest of the state is nearing a max-out point, and gains in population dense areas must occur. Suburban growth equals more apartment buildings to accommodate the influx and brings with it the transient voter registrations that never get deleted and can be exploited for mail-ballot harvesting, which is more difficult to spot as population density increases.
Opportunities for Election Manipulation
Familiarize yourself with the grading criteria for my election ratings. Here is how Wisconsin rates with regard to the most common election demerits and its own unique traits:
· Voter ID – Wisconsin has a photo ID requirement for in-person voting, but in 2020, these requirements were avoided by abusing the “indefinitely confined” category of voter with regarding to valid mail-in ballots. Loopholes exist to thwart this, the most basic of election security measures.
· Same Day Registration – Wisconsin facilitates same day voter registration, which has a crippling impact on statewide elections and enables substantial manipulation in the state’s only Democrat strongholds, Dane and Milwaukee Counties.
· Ballot Harvesting – Wisconsin does not permit ballot harvesting and serious efforts were made to eliminate drop boxes, which enable the practice; unfortunately, Wisconsin’s corrupt courts have continued to allow drop boxes and in doing so, tacitly confirm ballot harvesting is practiced in the state, especially in urban areas like Milwaukee.
· Unique Corruption – Milwaukee (primarily) and Dane Counties continuously find ways to be the last counties with votes to report. Milwaukee in particular was behind the Democrat gubernatorial win over Scott Walker in 2018 and the heist of the presidential race in 2020, while Eric Hovde’s Senate run was thwarted this year due to more absentee fraud tied to same day registration and existing corruption.
The weak-kneed Wisconsin GOP has allowed Meagan Wolfe to remain as head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which ensures no meaningful changes, such as those meant to ensure free and fair elections, are allowed to take root.
· Automatic Voter Registration – Wisconsin does not operate Automatic Voter Registration.
The Road Ahead
The Wisconsin GOP and its constant inaction is all that stands between Wisconsin being decided by late night ballot dumps from Milwaukee, and a comfortably Republican state that reliably sends two GOP Senators to Washington and produces 10 electoral votes for Republican presidential nominees every four years. Only a group as inept as Paul Ryan and Robin Vos’s Grand Old Party could consistently get thwarted by two counties in what is becoming a blood red state everywhere else, but then again, there is substantial evidence that they are working for someone other than Republican voters and American workers.
Wisconsin’s election laws, same day registration notwithstanding, are actually pretty good; the issue, however, is that they aren’t enforced, and ballot harvesting and corruption stemming from bad voter rolls (which, ironically, are better than Pennsylvania and Michigan’s) persist. Despite Trump’s win, the legislative majority under Vos, who is arguably the weakest state legislator in America, is smaller. Same day registration needs to be scrapped if anything is, and all pressure should be on that, with attention also to ensure no talk of Automatic Voter Registration or expansion of mail-in balloting becomes part of the legislative agenda. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if Governor Evers follows Josh Shapiro’s example from Pennsylvania and issues an executive order to implement Automatic Voter Registration. The Wisconsin GOP needs a leader like James Tesauro if they are ever going to catch the necessary attitude to fight back against the Democrat menace.
Final Grade and Closing Commentary
The Top 5 Election Integrity Targets in Wisconsin are (in no order):
· Milwaukee County
· Dane County
· Waukesha County
· Kenosha County
· Brown County
Most Suspect Outcomes
· Wisconsin U.S. Senate – with just 28,781 ballots separating Hovde and Baldwin, Harris getting clobbered in Iowa but somehow outgaining Biden in Wisconsin, and with Baldwin’s winning margin coming in the wee hours of the morning on November 6, there is no doubt in my military mind that Hovde had his race stolen. Hovde also knows this, but unfortunately, conceded his race. I’ll bet you a plate of cheese curds he was threatened into doing that.
· Presidency – artificially reduced Trump margin of victory, brought about by the need to steal Hovde’s apparent Senate victory out from under him. Based on the average of how Iowa has overperformed compared to Wisconsin in the Trump era (+8.8%), it is not out of the realm of possibility for a likely Trump victory margin in Wisconsin to exceed four points, which is about where the state was when it was apparent Trump would win it.
Wisconsin receives a Grade of 4 - Highest Concern – based on its demerits, known troubles, indication of concentrated manipulation in 2024, corrupt courts, and shocking internal corruption, such as that carried out by Meagan Wolfe and the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Wisconsin qualifies as one of just five states that will receive the most serious negative rating regarding election integrity and the administration of the 2020 election, and it may be possible that the Badger State, pound for pound, is the worst of all in this grouping for the 2024 election.
Demerits: Same Day Registration, Ballot Harvesting, Unique Corruption
Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.
Another in an excellent series of election integrity articles, Seth! This is the one person perhaps most responsible for the electoral corruption in Wisconsin, as well as the other swing states: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/06/16/the-guy-who-organizes-ballot-counting-says-election-results-will-not-match-polling/