Republican support dwindles in Wisconsin’s historic GOP strongholds

Wisconsin’s WOW counties, the suburban counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington outside of Milwaukee, have been the Republican epicenters of the state for decades. Trends, however, suggest they may be moving more to the left than they historically have been.

Waukesha is the state’s third most populous with nearly 400,000 residents, behind the two most populous counties Milwaukee and Dane, which are the Democratic strongholds of the state. With Wisconsin’s national political relevance being so grand in recent elections, Waukesha’s status as a Republican stronghold is important if Republicans want to keep winning statewide elections in Wisconsin. 

“It’s kind of a political joke amongst pundits that it all comes down to Waukesha County, Wisconsin. There is some truth to that —the turnout is really important for Republicans there. It’s really a place that they need,” Mike Wagner, a professor who focuses on political communication and public opinion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, told the Washington Examiner. 

Historically, the WOW counties have been the most Republican areas of the state. During the 2008 presidential race, former President Barack Obama carried the state of Wisconsin by 14 points, but performed poorly in these counties. Obama won 59 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, but in Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties, he received less than 40% of the vote, which were some of the lowest numbers of all the counties he lost.

In 2012, presidential candidate Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) received 64.63% of the support in Ozaukee country. The county had previously been considered to be the most Republican of the three and even the state, but now looks to be the least of the WOW counties.

“Ozaukee County was the most Republican county in all of Wisconsin in the 1990s but that same time the ‘O’ in WOW has gone from being the most Republican county to, like the 40 or 44th,” Wagner said. “It’s really decreased in its power.”

“When Scott Walker was running for governor in 2014, Ozaukee County gave Republicans a more than 40 point margin. While the Republican candidate for governor won Ozaukee County in 2022, it was by 10 or 11 points,” Wagner said.

From 1996 through 2020, no Democratic candidate won even a single municipality, town, or city in these three counties. President Joe Biden narrowly flipped the city of Cederburg in Ozaukee County in 2020, highlighting somewhat of a shift in this region. 

“It used to be that the WOW counties really were lockstep together, and now the O in WOW is disappearing. Washington and Waukesha counties are still strongly Republican, Ozaukee County has been shifting more to the Democrats,” Wagner said. “WOW is losing its wow factor in a way.” 

Washington County is becoming the most Republican of the three counties. Trump won Washington County by almost 40 points in 2020, but only won Ozaukee County by 12, far down from Romney’s nearly 30-point win there in 2012.

As former President Donald Trump leans into right-wing populism, his message is becoming more popular in rural areas of the state than it is with the the more traditional areas the Republican Party has been strong in. Former speaker Paul Ryan’s district used to encompass parts of Waukesha County and he was vastly popular with these counties.

Now, as Ryan and other conservatives like Romney step away from the party, these counties seemingly are, too.

“When Trump first ran for president in 2016 in the Wisconsin primary, Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin primary, not Trump,” Wagner said. “After it was pretty clear Trump was going to be the nominee, and so lots of Republicans just were not wild about him, but once he became the party’s nominee, they got blind and voted for him.” 

“But after seeing him as president, some of those voters could not pull the lever for him again and voted for Biden,” Wagner continued.

Reproductive rights and abortion has also been a driving factor for suburban women in recent elections, not just in the Milwaukee suburbs, but nationwide. Wagner credited some of the political shift to abortion. 

“It’s been a huge issue, and it’s really been highlighted in voting in the state Supreme Court,” Wagner said. He pointed to the fact that Wisconsin voters actually vote for Wisconsin Supreme Court justices instead of justices being appointed. 

In the last two Supreme Court races in the state, campaigns have focused on abortion because after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion was briefly outlawed in Wisconsin entirely.

In the state’s 2023 supreme court race, liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz won and her campaign invested heavily not only in Dane and Milwaukee counties, but also the WOW counties. Once again, Ozaukee county shifted slightly as her opponent, conservative Daniel Kelly, won the county by just five percentage points, as compared to Mitt Romney‘s 30-point win in 2012.

Voting habits in the 2024 primaries in the WOW counties also indicate a leftward shift. This month, Wisconsin voters rejected two GOP-backed ballot questions aimed at decreasing the spending power of the governor. Democrats waged a campaign urging Wisconsinites to vote “no,” which ultimately paid off as they did not pass.

In the WOW counties, the “yes” vote for these questions got only 50% of the vote in Ozaukee County and 57% of the vote in Waukesha County. Ten years earlier, Walker was reelected with more than 70% of the vote in Waukesha and Ozaukee counties in 2014. 

It wasn’t a primary fluke either as the primary also had record turnout, with 26% of those voting aged or higher in the state voting, the highest in 60 years for a presidential year partisan primary.