President Donald J. Trump is joined on stage by Theresa Sprader of Derco Aeroispace Inc. during his remarks on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Friday, July 12, 2019, at Derco Aerospace Inc in Milwaukee, Wisc. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
In The New Yorker, Joseph O’Neill explains just how important Wisconsin will be to the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. He writes (abridged):
Our polarized national politics means that the Presidential election is exceptionally transparent. If the Democrat flips Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, he or she will almost certainly win.
If Donald Trump holds just one of these states, he will very likely scrape together an Electoral College majority.
In the 2018 midterms, which came to be known as the Blue Wave, Democratic gubernatorial candidates won in Pennsylvania and Michigan by about seven points. In Wisconsin, the Democrat Tony Evers defeated Scott Walker, the incumbent governor, by a point—fewer than thirty thousand votes.
If the upcoming Presidential race goes down to the wire, it very much looks like the wire will be in Wisconsin.
The suburbs of Milwaukee in Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties are heavily white and legendary in political circles for delivering victories to the G.O.P. While suburbs elsewhere in the country have turned away from the Republican Party.
Most Democrats in Wisconsin are concentrated in two cities: Madison and Milwaukee.
Milwaukee has been rated the worst city in the country to be an African-American resident, yet nearly forty per cent of its population is African-American.
What may be the most downtrodden urban community in the United States has a superpower: the potential to decide who will be the country’s next President.
Joseph O’Neill February 18, 2020 The New Yorker
