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Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022

In the past 20 years, have rural Wisconsin counties shifted red?


yes

Voting data from rural Wisconsin counties since 2004 show that those areas have trended to the right in the ensuing years.

In 2020, the state's small rural counties voted for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush by an aggregate of five percentage points. In 2020, those same counties voted for Republican President Donald Trump by an aggregate of 20 percentage points. 

Data from elections leading up to 2020 — especially on the state and national levels — show how every two years, rural parts of the state have swung further to the right. Barack Obama won 59 of Wisconsin's 72 counties in 2008, compared to Hillary Clinton's 12 in 2016 and Joe Biden's 14 in 2020.

However, analysts say that statewide, the uptick in Republican votes in rural Wisconsin has been roughly offset in recent elections by decreasing vote shares in the suburban Waukesha and Ozaukee counties — and large Democratic margins in the urban Dane and Milwaukee counties.

See a full discussion of this at Wisconsin Watch

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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