2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide: The State Assembly
2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide: The State Assembly
They're still underdogs, but for the first time in a long time, Democrats have a real chance to win the majority in the State Assembly in the first election under new, fairer maps.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
This is part of The Recombobulation Area and Civic Media’s 2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide. Read the first part of the series, ”New Board, New Game,” here.
Every two years, the Wisconsin State Assembly starts fresh. Each of the 99 seats is on the ballot, with all state representatives elected to serve a two-year term. These biennial election cycles bring with them new possibilities for the voters from every corner of the state to determine Wisconsin’s future. It’s a moment of possibility, of new beginnings. It is a true moment for democracy.
But for more than a decade, the hope of that moment has been snuffed out, with results all but preordained through some of the most egregiously gerrymandered maps in place anywhere in the country. In this 50-50 purple state, Republicans have held 60 or more Assembly seats every year since passing these maps following the 2010 census. The GOP has held the majority in the Assembly for all but five of the last 32 years, but it wasn’t until those maps were in place that 60 or more Republican representatives became the norm. Through this entrenched power, the Assembly became increasingly unaccountable to Wisconsin’s voters, and under the leadership of Republican Robin Vos, continued to ignore the will of the people.
But now, with new, fairer maps in place for the 2024 election, that hope and possibility is finally returning to the Wisconsin State Legislature. For the first time in more than 13 years, either party could win the majority in the Assembly.
Yes, really. This might be discombobulating to wrap your head around after so many years of Democrats being boxed-out of power, but there is a real path for them to reach that 50-seat threshold and control the Assembly. While a Democratic majority in the Senate is optimistically still two years away, there is a potential outcome where Greta Neubauer is Assembly Speaker and Robin Vos is Minority Leader come January 2025. That would be an earthquake in Wisconsin state politics.
At the DNC in Chicago, I sat down with Neubauer to talk about the chances of Democrats getting to the majority in this year’s election, and she thinks it can happen. She even put a number on it, predicting they’d win 52 seats.
“Many of these legislative races will probably be decided by a few hundred votes,” she said. “There are so many close districts under these maps. (There are) 10 seats where, if you layer on Biden’s results from 2020, it would be two percentage points plus or minus for Biden…We have 52 seats that Gov. Evers would have won if we’d had these maps in 2022. We have 49 that Biden would have won, and three that he would have lost by half a percentage point. So, the path is there.”
Neubauer is correct to say the path is indeed there. But at this point, Democrats should still be considered the underdogs to win the Assembly majority — I’d give them about a 40% chance to flip the chamber. The most likely outcome is that Republicans remain in the majority, but a very slim one, and nothing close to the near-supermajority they’ve enjoyed for so many years.
Republicans also clearly took candidate recruitment far more seriously this year. In years past, they could get away with having more extreme, inexperienced candidates because the maps were on their side. Now, there are fewer candidates in competitive districts with fringe views, or who may have denied the results of the 2020 election — though many incumbents in safe districts still might fit that description. Now, candidates like Jessie Rodriguez in the 21st or Dean Kaufert in the 53rd could very well overperform the partisan lean of their new district.
At the same time, all of the momentum in the presidential race is currently on Democrats’ side, with Kamala Harris becoming the nominee providing a jolt of enthusiasm that’s being felt up and down the ticket in Wisconsin. There is also every reason to believe there is a whole lot of pent-up energy among Democratic voters who have been denied opportunities for representation for nearly a generation under gerrymandered maps.
So, it will come down to toss-up districts — toss-up districts in places like Ashwaubenon or Oak Creek or Neenah or Sheboygan or Wausau or Greenfield or La Crosse. The swingiest parts of the state will be the ones to determine the majority. What a concept.
In the Assembly, we’ve broken this down into several categories. They are…
The Toss-Ups (8)
The Close Races (4)
The Safe Seats
The Safe Democrats (27)
Probably Safe (13)
Very Safe (14)
The Safe Republicans (44)
Probably Safe (4)
Very Safe (38)
The Uncontested Races (16)
Uncontested Democrats (14)
Uncontested Republicans (2)
Here is where we see the true political geography of Wisconsin revealed. Republicans like to argue that Democrats are clustered in larger cities, and that’s why the GOP tends to win in the state legislature. There is a shred of truth to that — large numbers of Democrats do live in Milwaukee and Madison — but it’s an overly simplistic, politically advantageous point that shrouds the truth about how Wisconsin is organized geographically.
The districts that lean furthest to one side include many of the heavily Democratic districts in Milwaukee and Madison that might be D+70 (or more). In this election, Republicans are not even contesting many of those seats.
The next furthest to one side can be seen in the many “Very Safe” Republican districts, often leaning 25% or more in favor of Republicans. There are more seats like this on the Republican side than on the Democratic side. The urban-rural divide has been amplified in the Trump era, and we certainly see that in Wisconsin, where larger, rural districts are more often deep red, but there are still enough rural Democrats to keep those margins closer to a 65%-35% range than an 80%-20% wipeout.
For blue-leaning districts — especially those in the “Probably Safe” category, which there are more of in the Democratic column — many might lean 15% in favor of Democrats. You can see this in districts anchored in cities like Wauwatosa, Whitewater, Appleton, Stevens Point, Kenosha, La Crosse or Eau Claire. There are fewer “Probably Safe” Republican districts, but some do appear in places like Door County or the city of Waukesha or counties in the southwestern part of the state.
Then, you have the truly competitive districts, and it’s a mix of cities in the Fox Valley and the Green Bay area, the Milwaukee area suburbs, certain clusters around western Wisconsin, and many of the mid-size cities dotting the state, like Wausau or Sheboygan.
Add it up, and we have 46 seats likely to be in Republican control, 41 likely to be in Democratic control, and 12 closely competitive seats that will ultimately determine the majority, eight of which could truly go either way.
So, let’s break this down, district-by-district, for all 99 seats. Let’s recombobulate, and preview all 99 seats on the ballot this year in the Wisconsin State Assembly.
See the full district-by-district breakdown at Civic Media.
You can also see each of these races on its own district page, and explore the Civic Media Voter Guide here.
ICYMI: Our State Senate guide is available here.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he became the Political Editor of Civic Media. He’s also written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 18 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.
Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.
Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!
Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer.