It was the state that cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election. Now, both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are ramping up their campaigns in hopes that Wisconsin will be theirs to win this time around.
After almost three weeks away from the Badger State, Trump will make a return to Wisconsin, the campaign announced Thursday. The Republican nominee will deliver marks in northeastern Wisconsin days before the November 5 election, appearing at the Resch Center in the Green Bay suburb of Ashwaubenon Wednesday night, his campaign said.
Wisconsin has increasingly emerged as a pivotal state in November's election. Polls show a deadheat between Trump and Harris. FiveThirtyEight's tracker has Harris up just 0.2 percentage points, as of Thursday. RealClearPolling's aggregator has Trump with the same-sized advantage.
Both Trump, Harris and their surrogates have ramped up their travels to Wisconsin in recent months. Trump barnstormed the state earlier this month, making four visits in just eight days. This week, Harris held an event in Brookfield with former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, while former President Barack Obama stumped with Harris' running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Wisconsin is critical to the "blue wall" that Democrats need to hold onto the White House. In 2016, Trump scored a massive upset after he unexpectedly won the state by 0.7 percent—a victory that many Democrats said cost Hillary Clinton the election. Clinton infamously did not step foot in Wisconsin during her campaign. Joe Biden was able to flip the Badger State in 2020, eking out a win by 0.63 percentage points, or around 20,000 votes.
This time around, neither campaign is willing to take Wisconsin for granted, Brandon Scholz, a retired Republican strategist in Wisconsin, told Newsweek. Trump and Harris, however, are using strikingly different strategies to ensure that Wisconsin goes their way.
Harris' Wisconsin Strategy
Harris has logged a lot of trips to Wisconsin. She made her first trip to the battleground state just two days after Biden stepped aside as the nominee and she's continued to storm through as Election Day nears.
Last Thursday, Harris held events and rallies in three different Wisconsin cities, stopping at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before heading to western Wisconsin for an afternoon event and then appearing before an at-capacity crowd of more than 4,000 at the same expo center Trump will campaign in next week.
"Harris has obviously taken [the Clinton] lesson and used it well," Scholz said.
But the cities in which she and her surrogates have appeared leads Scholz to believe that Harris' campaign is not trying to sway undecided voters or more moderate Republicans. Seeing Obama and Walz stump in Madison—which Biden carried with more than 75 percent of the vote in 2020 and Clinton carried with 70 percent—"says to me, part of the Harris strategy here is to make sure that base is rock solid from a turnout perspective."
"They're going to Milwaukee, they're going to Madison, and somebody will get up to Green Bay. But to me, they're really focusing on the base here in Wisconsin," Scholz said. "Harris isn't taking it for granted at all, even if she's just locking down these hardcore Democrat areas."
He added, "The same holds true for Tim Walz, the VP Democratic candidate whose multiple trips into Wisconsin serve to motivate and fortify the Democratic base vote."
Harris has also shored up major endorsements from Wisconsin Republicans, like Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly and the state's longest-serving state senator, Robert Cowles. And she's appeared at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts with Cheney and conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes on Monday.
But Scholz is questioning whether the gambit to convince Republicans to switch from Trump to Harris is gaining any traction in America's Dairyland.
"If Republicans haven't made up their mind between Trump and Harris, Liz Cheney couldn't change that," he said. "It just hasn't generated that chatter at the kitchen table, so to speak, on the street with your friends."
Trump's Wisconsin Strategy
Trump, on the other hand, does not appear to be too focused on solidifying the GOP base. Instead, he's made a number of targeted stops that include heavily Democratic Counties, like Dane County, where Madison is located, while also fortifying the Republican vote in the state's southwestern corner, a less popular stop.
"The idea was for Trump to generate enthusiasm," Scholz said. "If he could push Republican voters above their 2020 levels, they might contribute more votes to that 10,000 to 20,000 votes that [Trump and Harris] are going to need to push the other one off the top."
"I don't know that [the rally] necessarily had thousands of people there, but it certainly was generating a boatload of news in the market," he said.
This is Trump's Wisconsin strategy: He comes in, hits hard and then sends it.
"Those targeted appearances that he did early on helped move the needle into Wisconsin," Scholz said.
Earlier this month, Trump told a crowded airplane hanger in rural Juneau. "They say that Wisconsin is probably the toughest of the swing states to win. I don't think so."
"If we win Wisconsin, we win the presidency," the former president said.
Trump's running mate, Senator JD Vance, will also appear in Wisconsin on Monday to talk about "Kamalanomics," a visit that comes not long after his Sunday trip to a bar in Waukesha where he watched the Packers game and spoke to supporters.
Scholz doesn't expect Vance's appearances in the Badger State to be a game changer but said the senator will help fortify the Republican base by making a few headlines that motivate voters to go out to the polls.
Either way, Scholz stressed that Wisconsin is still a toss-up state.
"You still have undecideds—whether they be their ticket splitters, independents, maybe a few Republicans, maybe a few Democrats—What's moving them? So far, they're holding, they're holding their pattern."
"[Wisconsin is] inside the margin of error, we're going to be inside the margin of error between now and Election Day," he said. "It's going to come down to the really boring subject of infrastructure, voter ID and turnout. Whether it's sophisticated or old line, if you ain't got the best program in town, then you're not going to turn out that last group of voters that you're going to need to win."
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