A federal court recently struck down Wisconsin’s GOP-drawn state Assembly map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered the legislature to draw a new one for 2018. Daily Kos Elections has calculated the 2016 presidential results for Wisconsin’s current state legislative districts—including both the Assembly lines that were just invalidated as well as the state Senate map, which still stands—to get an idea of just how GOP-friendly these maps are. The answer, unsurprisingly, is that they’re very gerrymandered.
In 2012, Obama defeated Romney 53-46 statewide, but only carried 16 of the state’s 33 Senate seats and 43 of its 99 Assembly districts. Trump, meanwhile, won the state by just 1 point, but ran away with an amazing 23 Senate seats and 63 assembly seats. (Trump traded two assembly seats that Romney won for nine Obama districts in the chamber.) In other words, by winning statewide by just a 48-47 margin, Trump carried 70 percent of the Senate and 64 percent of the Assembly. That’s insane.
Another way to look at this is to sort each seat in each chamber by Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted. Trump carried the median Senate seat 53-42 and took the median assembly seat 52-42. That means that, under the current maps, Badger State Democrats would need to carry a ton of red turf to even have a chance at seizing a bare majority, no easy proposition.
As you’d expect, Senate Republicans hold a considerable majority—20 to 13, with three Democrats representing Trump seats. Two of those Democrats, Janet Bewley and Kathleen Vinehout, won in 2014 and will be up next year. Bewley’s northern Wisconsin SD-25 went from 56-43 Obama all the way to 52-43 Trump, while Vinehout’s Eau Claire-area SD-31 swung from 55-44 Obama to 49-45 Trump. State Sen. Dave Hansen managed to win last year 51-49 as his constituents were backing Trump 53-42; four years before, his Green Bay SD-30 backed Obama 52-47. He won’t go before voters again until 2020, though.
The GOP holds two other state Senate seats that swung from Obama to Trump. The southwestern SD-17 went from 57-42 all the way to 52-43 Trump, while the Appleton-based SD-19 went from an extremely narrow 49.16-49.15 Obama win to 50-43 Trump; both seats are up in midterm years. The only potentially bright spot for Team Blue was the suburban Milwaukee SD-05, which went from 56-43 Romney to just 48-47 Trump; GOP state Sen. Leah Vukmir, who represents the seat, is next up in 2018.
The entire assembly, meanwhile, is up every two years, and the GOP now has a 64-35 advantage in the chamber following November’s elections. Two Democrats hold Trump seats, while three Republicans sit Clinton districts. AD-23 in the Milwaukee suburbs was one of the few seats where there was a large swing toward Team Blue: While Romney won 57-41, Clinton carried it 50-45. However, GOP Assemblyman Jim Ott won re-election without any opposition. The other Romney/Clinton seat was AD-14, also in suburban Milwaukee, which went from 57-43 Romney to 49-45 Clinton; GOP Assemblyman Dale Kooyenga still won re-election by a clear 57-43. The reddest Democratic-held seat is AD-94 around La Crosse, which swung from 52-47 Obama to 49.0-45.5 Trump; Democratic incumbent Steve Doyle, however, still won re-election 53-47.