Trump Turns Wisconsin Red Again

Donald Trump has knocked down the “blue wall” Tuesday and turned Wisconsin red again. 

The former president won the battleground Badger State’s 10 electoral votes, with Fox News and Decision Desk HQ projecting Trump the winner of the contentious presidential election. 

Victory in Wisconsin arrived just as the calendar turned on Election Day and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign carriage turned back into a pumpkin. With 92 percent of the vote in, Trump led Harris by nearly 3 percentage points, or nearly 153,000 votes, in the state. The lead was too much to overcome for the Democrat, even with the usual early-morning ballot dump in leftist-led Milwaukee still looming. 

Trump’s victory in swing state Wisconsin followed on the heels of his win in another critical so-called “blue wall” state, Pennsylvania, with its coveted 19 electoral votes. He had already bagged swing states Georgia and North Carolina on his way to hitting the 270-electoral-vote threshold. Final vote tallies are awaited in western swing states Arizona and Nevada, but both were leaning red early Wednesday morning. 

‘Wisconsin Was the Cornerstone’

The former president spoke to supporters just after 2 a.m. Wisconsin time, calling his victory and that of his fellow Republicans in Congress an “unprecedented mandate.” Republicans won back the Senate, and they appeared to have held control of the House. 

“And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal,” Trump said. “We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country. We made history for a reason tonight.”

Wisconsin Republicans celebrated a hard-fought win at the top of the ticket — redemption for Trump and the GOP after losing the Badger State by an inch, less than 21,000 votes, in 2020. 

“From the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Wisconsin was the cornerstone of President Trump’s victory,” said Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming. “This election was a triumph for the millions of working families who made their voices heard after four years of neglect and division. It is now time for all of us as Americans to come together, rally behind President Trump, and work as one to build a better future for our country.”

State and national GOP officials credit an aggressive ground game, particularly reaching likely and low propensity voters and persuading them to vote early. Four years ago, Democrats used Covid to push unprecedented numbers of absentee ballots. The state’s largest, Dem-controlled cities also benefited from millions of dollars in private cash — part of hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funds from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg funneled through leftist groups — to target liberal voters. The election was marred by myriad irregularities and outright violations of election law. 

Four years later, vigilance seemed to keep the shenanigans in check. While a security breach involving multiple vote tabulators at Milwaukee’s Central Count location raised alarms and the city again failed to finish its count before early morning as it had done in 2020, Election Day voting seemed to go off without a hitch across the state. 

While Wisconsin’s Senate race was too close to call early Wednesday morning, five of the state’s six Republican House members easily won reelection, with western Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden on the verge of winning another term. And state legislative Republicans held the Assembly and continue to dominate in the state despite Democrat Gov. Tony Evers gerrymandered district maps — “Tonymandered,” as Republicans call the political boundaries implemented for this election.  

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.