President-elect Donald Trump won Wisconsin and the nation in the Nov. 5 general election. Wisconsin’s Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin also won reelection over Republican challenger Eric Hovde. In the state Legislature, Democrats picked up 14 seats under new district maps. Here & Now reporter Zac Schultz broke down the legislative shift, UW-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky analyzed the presidential vote, and political panelists Bill
  McCoshen and Scot Ross alternately cheered and jeered the top-of-the-ticket results.

Zac Schultz
Senior political reporter, Here & Now

• New legislative district maps in Wisconsin resulted in more competitive elections for the seats. In the 2024 election, Democratic candidates flipped14 seats in the state Legislature. Republicans still hold the majority in both chambers, but in the state Senate Democrats won four contested seats, making the margin 18 to 15. In the Assembly, Democrats picked up 10 seats, making the Republican majority there 54 to 45. Schultz described the implications.
• Schultz: “It’s pretty big. In the Senate, Republicans had a supermajority, which means they had the ability to constitutionally impeach people. We’ve seen them do that in the past. They refused to seat any of Gov. Evers appointees and rejected quite a few of them. So with that large of a power imbalance in the state Senate, Republicans could do whatever they wanted with a much more narrow majority. Not only did they lose two incumbents, which is pretty significant — Duey Stroebel sits on Joint Finance and he was a big conservative figurehead in that party, and knocking him off is a pretty big accomplishment for Democrats. Just the implications of them running ahead and against these Republican headwinds that came everywhere else — these were four swing seats that they won and picked up in this race. In prior years where we’ve seen a red wave election, so to speak — 2010, 2014 — Democrats down ballot are getting crushed. So the Democrats are rightfully so saying they did a really big job of winning these seats and putting themselves in position to possibly challenge for the majority in the Senate in 2026.”

Anthony Chergosky
Professor, UW-La Crosse Department of Political Science and Public Administration

• Chergosky pointed to uniform gains for Republicans across different geographic areas and multiple demographics as key to Trump’s victory. The gains were smaller in Wisconsin than elsewhere, but nonetheless were enough for him to win the election in the state over Harris.
• Chergosky: “Just general dissatisfaction with the Biden administration, and there could be different factors driving that dissatisfaction. But when we look across the country, there was this uniform swing towards the Trump ticket across all kinds of geographic areas, across all kinds of demographics. So it tells me that this election was bigger than any one specific region, any one specific geographic area, any one specific demographic, though there are some demographics that do stand out as particularly significant. In general, this just seems to be a broad repudiation of the Biden administration.”

Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross
Republican and Democratic political panelists

• The loss by Harris was very raw for Ross, who expressed fear over what the secondTrump administration will look like. For McCoshen, the new MAGA mandate is positive. He spoke to the appeal of Trump, while Ross critiqued the campaign.
• McCoshen: “He grew his base with women, with men on college campuses, with Hispanics, with Blacks, with young voters. I think the appeal really revolves around the top issues that he discussed, and that’s the economy and immigration. Those are the primary issues for all walks of life here in the state of Wisconsin and frankly, across the country. And I think that’s why he improved in 49 out of 50 states and the state of Wisconsin. He now has the highest turnout ever at roughly 1.7 million. And frankly, to her credit, Kamala Harris has the third highest total ever. The only Democrat who did better than her was Barack Obama in 2008, and there’s only 10,000 votes that separate him. So while overall turnout in the country was down considerably, it was up in the state of Wisconsin.”
• Ross: “I think it’s unfortunate that America would rather put a racist rapist who has been convicted of 34 felonies in the White House than a woman. And I think it came down to two things. I think it came down to sexism. And I think it came down to hundreds of millions of dollars in transphobic ads that were appealing to people’s worst natures. You know, if you want to talk about the economy, we lost 3 million jobs under Donald Trump. You know, we gained 15 million jobs under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So it’s very clear that the economy was not at play here. As much as I appreciate what Bill saying. It was very much a divisive, hate filled campaign by Donald Trump. Kamala Harris tried to try to parry that with joy. It did not work in the end. And people are going to suffer. And all across Wisconsin, all across the United States for that. And our economy is certainly going to suffer.”

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