Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: Wisconsin's Partisan Tipping Points

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to “Noon Wednesday,” I’m Marisa Wojcik, multimedia journalist for “Here & Now” on PBS Wisconsin. Today is November 10. This week, the state legislature is voting on map proposals that change the boundaries of the state assembly in the senate as well as congress districts for the next ten years. The redistricting process is confusing and sometimes even contradictory, however, a tool called the partisan index. It can help us understand how a district is skewed. Jack Kelly from “The Cap Times” who compiled the data for the index is joining me now, and, Jack, thank you so much for being here.

Jack Kelly:

Hey, happy to be here, thanks for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

So just to start kind of from the 30,000 foot view, what information does something like a partisan voter index provide to the average voter? It sounds a little intimidating.

Jack Kelly:

Sure. Sure. So, the PVI is meant to show the partisan skew based on voting trends of a legislative district here in Wisconsin. We have 132 legislative districts, 99 in the assembly, and 33 in the state senate. Basically, what the PVI shows is how many percentage points on average does a legislative vote more republican or democratic based on voting trends, and voting trends for the data base are the election results from the 2020 presidential election and then the 2016 presidential election.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so, tell us how the partisan voting index works in general.

Jack Kelly:

Sure. So, there is two maps, and, basically, they are interactive, and you are able to look at all of the legislative districts in the state, and each district gets a PVI score. Those PVI scores could be R plus 10 or d plus 4 or tossup. What’s that mean? R plus 10 means that district votes ten percentage points more republican than the state as a whole. That means the same thing for democrats, and then toss you ratings mean districts are what they sound like, tossups. That means they are less than 1.5 percentage points skewed in either direction. The tossup metric is a little arbitrary, but we thought that 1.5 percentage points we thought fair given turnout is key in the assembly districts and to shift 1.5 percentage points is not that much in a general election like a presidential election where you have a higher turnout, and so basically it is three metrics showing the partisan skew and towards Republicans, Democrats, or very a few occasions in Wisconsin, a true tossup.

Marisa Wojcik:

So you are taking the voting trends of how people in Wisconsin have voted for presidents over the last two elections, so 2016 to 2020, and the average of that is the baseline, and then if a particular district voted a certain percentage point above that baseline, then they are going to have R-plus-10, for example, and so it really kind of shows you, really, how strong certain political leanings are in certain districts, is that right?

Jack Kelly:

Yeah. That’s exactly right. It is important to know, like you said, the maps, themselves, represent voting trends. They do not necessarily represent the party of the lawmaker who holds that district. There are a few exceptions in the map where, let’s say a Democrat holds a district that has a Republican rating, and a Republican holds a district with a Democratic rating. Yeah. That’s exactly right.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so zooming in a little bit on the maps, are any districts what you characterize as equal, meaning they are very competitive, or even teetering towards equal, so that means, you know, a Democrat or Republican candidate could have kind of an equal opportunity to campaign and potentially win that seat?

Jack Kelly:

Yeah. So, this is a great question as well. There are very a few of them based on the data base that we’ve built. There are four districts of the 99 in the assembly that get a tossup rating. Two of them are in the greater Milwaukee area in the suburbs where we saw a harsh backlash to former President Trump in 2020, and one of them is in northwest Wisconsin along the Minnesota border, and the fourth is the greater La Crosse area outside the city limits. Those are the four districts that get tried and true tossup ratings. There are some other districts that find themselves in that plus 1.5, 1.6, plus 2 kind of rating that maybe would be a little more competitive. When you look at the state senate, none of the districts get a tossup rating by our metrics, but that being said, there are two, at least two districts, where it gets a Democratic rating, and a Republican holds the seat, but there’s another one where a Republican gets the rating, but a Democrat holds the seat. So just because it is a tossup, it doesn’t mean that one party can’t necessarily win the seat even if it goes against it. It gets substantially harder, right, if you’re a Democrat running in an R-plus-1.9 district, that’s easier to win than a Democrat running in an R-plus-12 district, and same could be said vice versa, right? There are many districts skewed very heavily towards Democrats and would be almost impossible for a Republican to win out.

Marisa Wojcik:

So those districts where it was favoring, say, Republican, yet a Democrat won that seat, they are really beating the odds of just kind of the general political persuasion of the area, and especially based on presidential elections and a greater trend towards straight ticket voting meaning if someone votes for a democratic president, they are likely to vote democrat all the way down. It is less common for people to vote both Democrat and Republican for local versus federal races so the trend of leaning in harder to a political party is stronger these days. What about the other side? Which districts are really heavily weighed towards Republicans or Democrats?

Jack Kelly:

So, this is also a really good question. I think this is actually one of the more powerful things the PVI can highlight. It highlights kind of the extreme partisan gerrymander that Wisconsinites have voted for under the last decade in the current maps, and I think you really see it kind of in two forms, right? In and around the Madison area, there’s eight districts that vote, on average, more than 15% more Democratic than the state as a whole, whereas when you flip it and conversely look at districts favoring Republicans, vast majority of those districts are in the R-plus-2 to R-plus-10 or 12 area, and you see this packing of Democratic voters in the Madison are and Milwaukee area basically to just jam them in a few districts as possible. Now, there is some cracking, kind of other accepted form of gerrymandering that people talk about. We see that in places like southeast Wisconsin. We see that with the district like Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s. Speaker Voss district runs up to the city of Racine, which does not encompass it at all deluding the Democratic voter in the city of Racine by stretching miles into western Racine. Speaker Vos is a safe seat with a rating of R-plus-9. The PVI do a good job of highlighting pack packing Democratic voters, in some cases, Cracking, and others showing that, you know, Republicans don’t really have a huge skew in a lot of districts if they have a consistent skew that is just big enough to make it hard for Democratic candidate to overcome against them when they are running.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so just a reminder, to be clear, this index for maps are for the current legislative districts as they exist today, not the redistricting maps that are being proposed right now. On Monday, the Senate passed along party lines the Republican drawn maps proposal, and the Assembly is expected to do the same tomorrow. Both are very heavy Republican majorities. Can we infer about how much this partisan voter index with today’s current maps could align with proposed maps and how those new district proposals could be skewed?

Jack Kelly:

Yes. So it is not perfect because the maps are not identical, but with that being said, Speaker Vos and Senate Majority Leader told us many times in public hearings and, you know, joint resolutions that the legislature passed, the maps that we’ve — as Wisconsinites voted under in the last ten years, those were very much the foundation for the maps that that lawmakers used to draw the current proposal, but they will finish voting on that tomorrow in the Legislature. Some things do shift. There are instances in incumbent pairing, there are new district that might not have an incumbent so there’s some shifts, but, yeah, it is useful in seeing that, you know, if these districts are so skewed now, and they are the foundation for the proposed new districts, it is a fairly safe assumption that those new districts would not be very competitive. Now, there’s been many other analyses that have shown this. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, for example, did interesting work about this. They have given the maps put forth by republicans an F-grade overall, and I think they get a C in competitiveness, and, basically, they have come to the conclusion that proposed maps are some of the most extreme gerrymandering possible if they were to be enacted.

Marisa Wojcik:

So what about the maps that were drawn by the People’s Maps Commission, which is a body created by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. Are they any more competitive? Are they any more kind of fulfilling what they say as being more fair maps?

Jack Kelly:

Yes. So that’s a great question too. The Peoples Maps Commissions proposal is — it is interesting. There have been some issues with it. It’s been criticized for maybe not abiding by the voting rights act because there’s not enough minority/majority districts. It is also interesting, something like the Princeton Gerrymandering Project I was looking at before we came on, gives the people’s maps commission, letter grade of a C for competitiveness, but it is important to keep in mind that the maps would almost certainly result in Democrats winning more seats in the Legislature. The competitiveness metric they use, by my understanding of it, is how competitive would each individual race be? It gets the same grade as the Republican proposal because the districts, the way the People’s Maps Commission has drawn them bears more Democratic seats, but the Democratic seat would not necessarily be competitive races. It’s not like every single district in Wisconsin would be coin tossed. They almost certainly would be more competitive in the sense that Democrats would win more seats in the legislature than they have right now, but it does not necessarily mean every race in every district is more competitive than what we have right now.

Marisa Wojcik:

Just really quick, why is competitiveness a good thing? Why is that a desirable quality for folks, say, at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project?

Jack Kelly:

Sure. That’s a great question as well. I think depending on who you ask, you will probably get a different answer. You know, basically, right now, and we had talked about this briefly as well, you know, Wisconsin is a swing state, and so the Legislature is very not reflective of that. Accordingly, you can see lawmakers lean more and more into their base rather than having to kind of walk this line and try to work bipartisanly so that they can win re-election in competitiveness. Competitiveness, in theory, breeds more bipartisanship. If you’re a lawmaker that can do and say whatever you want, introduce whatever legislation you want without fear of losing re-election, you know, there’s little accountability there. I think someone would tell you competitive can be good because it, you know, holds people accountable more often. Lawmakers would have to think more before they act in order to win more votes, and so competitiveness, from that measure, is interesting. For the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, I think that, you know, they — it is heavily based in statistics. In their world, they want to see districts as close to a 50/50 tossup as they could. Competitiveness is interesting and depends on who you ask and you’ll get a lot of different answers about it.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, in that sense, how exactly is Wisconsin a swing state, if there are so many Republican seats that outnumber Democrats? Why is Wisconsin always seen as a swing state when it comes to presidential elections, statewide elections?

Jack Kelly:

Yeah. So that’s a great question as well. Wisconsin’s a swing state because, let’s be honest, it swings and has, you know, 2016 was a shock to a lot of people when President Trump carried the state. Prior to that, you know, a Republican had not won Wisconsin since the ’80s, but we’ve seen a very fierce battle between Republicans and Democrats for statewide office. Democrats have had success in recent statewide elections, and though that could easily swing back as we saw in early 2010, Republicans dominated things, and so that’s interesting. How is Wisconsin a swing state? I think that the gerrymander actually highlights how much of a swing state Wisconsin is. Democratic voters, no secret, are packed into urban centers in Dane County, Madison, Milwaukee, and we see them other places too, Wausau is a little pocket, Eau Claire is a little picket, La Crosse, you know, the city of Green Bay. It is interesting. The state as a whole, the legislature inherently, experts will tell you, favor Republicans by two or three percentage points in redistricting, drawing the maps, and Wisconsin is a big rural space, and Democratic voters are fairly concentrated, and so Wisconsin is a swing state because from a total statewide vote, we see a very close 50/50 split. The legislature, even if the districts were a tossup in every district, you’d probably still see slight skew favorable for republicans just based on that kind of rural geography of Wisconsin.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, the Cook Political Report says that, you know, while a lot of people blame gerrymandering for the cause of how polarized politics have become, they say they’ve found that voters are actually self-sorting politically, meaning that where they are kind of tends to align with how they vote, and it is not gerrymandering that’s the problem, but it is naturally happening. Is that a fair characterization of what’s happening in Wisconsin?

Jack Kelly:

That’s a great question. It is really interesting. I think the Cook Political Report certainly makes a saline point. Like minded people like to live among like-minded people. A number of psychologists would tell you that. I do think that gerrymandering could contribute to this hyper partisan political landscape we’ve seen, you know, what we discussed earlier, right? If I’m an incumbent that never faces a serious challenge from somebody of the opposite party, you know, I can really lean into the base. In Wisconsin, it is that conservative base, and we’ve seen things they legislate on recently that leans into the conservative base and the kind of growing element of what, you know, people call the culture wars in and around Wisconsin. So, I think that gerrymandering can lead to hyper partisanship because it, you know, it almost creates an element of lack of accountability for lawmakers, and this is both sides. Democrats in Madison are not going to lose their seats so Democrats in Madison can go to the legislature, do and say what they want like a Republican in an R-plus 15 rural district in north central Wisconsin is not going to lose their seat. They can do the same thing in the legislature. There’s partisanship because of the lack of accountability because you don’t have to fear losing reelection, and so I think the Cook Political Report makes a good point. Yes, I mean, like-minded people like to live alongside like-minded people, hang out with them, and do those kinds of things, but I think it is maybe too much an oversimplification.

Marisa Wojcik:

Now, Governor Tony Evers is expected to veto the GOP proposal and has said that the current maps should just be thrown out. Does starting from scratch make drawing competitive maps even possible given Wisconsins demographics and geographics. Have people, for example, from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project been able to give examples of how it could work?

Jack Kelly:

Yeah. I mean, I think that we can just look back at Wisconsins history to see how it would work. You know, Governor Evers will veto the bill. He said that several times. I talked to him about it. He is adamant the moment they are passed and on his desk, he’ll use the veto pen to strike it down. That sets up the standard approach of redistricting in Wisconsin, which is a lawsuit and court settlement. Normally, it’s a federal court. That’s how it was in the ’80s and ’90s and the ’00s, and they tweaked maps implemented for the past decade. The tate supreme court handled this in the ’60s and might very well do it this time, but it is interesting. Going back to the point of, you know, can you draw from scratch and create a competitive environment? I look at the 2000s. A federal court drew the districts that Wisconsin voters voted under during the 2000s, and we saw a number of majority changes in either one or both chambers of the legislature, right? I mean, we saw it right before Republicans became the majority, kind of on the back of the Tea Party Movement and backlash to the former President Obama and passing the Affordable Care Act. Those maps, Democrats were the majority. Majority in the senate. Majority in the assembly. There was a Democratic governor. In the next election under the more competitive maps, Republicans swept them away winning a huge majority in the senate and assembly. It can be done you can draw more competitive maps. The courts have done it before. I’m not an expert on map drawing, but I certainly think Wisconsin history shows it is possible to draw it up from scratch while also possible taking into consideration things submitted to the court. That’s why the governor is adamant about the People’s Maps Commission anticipating this goes to a lawsuit and has something to present to the court to work from. The same thing with the Republican plans that we see passed by the legislature this week.

Marisa Wojcik:

And we learned — well, again, from Charles Franklin’s Marquette Law School Poll last week, majority of people favor nonpartisan body to draw the maps. Redistricting officials have to follow certain criteria in the law. However, there’s a lot of leeway in the parameters, and it is up to person’s interpretation of those criteria. Often, as we said before, can sometimes be contradictory. Are there any criteria saying that districts should strive to be competitive, and that that is a desirable goal?

Jack Kelly:

Right. So, competitiveness, in and of itself, is not a criteria for drawing maps. Speaker Vos pointed this out in the hearing when he and the majority leader testified you can consider this in drawing maps. They admitted they considered partisanship drawing the maps that are before the legislature right now. It is important to keep in mind, competitiveness is not a criteria necessarily that can be used or determined to use to determine what boundaries should look like. You know, there’s the obvious ones laid out in the state constitution, and districts need to be continuous, you want to as much as possible, keep communities’ interests in tact, and also, there’s a concept following a federal court rulings going back to the ’60s of one person, one vote. What a court really looks like at districts when we get into a lawsuit, like we are going to see in the coming months, is are there an equal number of people in each district? You know, there could be small variations in that number. What if the variation is too great? The federal court will actually step in and tweak what the districts look like to adjust some of that number. Competitiveness, not something that courts will consider. It is kind of one person, one vote moment is much more — is what federal judges will find much more intriguing. Now, there are ways to do it, you know, democratic voters made a claim in the three judge panel ruled the current maps unconstitutional before that lawsuit was thrown out on a technicality by the US Supreme Court. That lawsuit, voters argued that, sure, there’s equal number of people in each district, but our votes are being wasted. It is that — it is that we are not represented in the way that we want. There are some interesting legal arguments to be made, and we’ll see how it plays out and whether the state supreme court decides to take this on, and whether they punt it and let a federal court settle it. The next a few months are going to be equally chaotic with a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of how we get to the final legislative maps.

Marisa Wojcik:

All right. We leave it there, Jack Kelly, from “The Cap Times,” thank you very much.

Jack Kelly:

Thank you so much for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from “Here & Now” and PBS Wisconsin, you can visit pbswisconsin.org, and thank you so much for joining us on “Noon Wednesday.”