Wisconsin presidential election vote margin

By the numbers

In the 43 elections between the formation of the Republican Party in 1854 that marked the beginning of the United States’ now-familiar two-party system and today, Wisconsin has cast its electoral votes in favor of Republican candidates 26 times, Democrat candidates 16 times, and the Progressive candidate once, data from the Wisconsin Blue Book show.

For the past couple of decades, Wisconsin was regarded as a crucial brick in the so-called “blue wall” of presidential politics: a bloc of northern states that reliably voted Democrat, albeit by sometimes slim margins.  

In 2016, however, Wisconsin became a swing state, flipping red to elect Donald Trump by margin of about 0.77%. Joe Biden then reclaimed Wisconsin for the Democrats in 2020, with a margin of just 0.63%.  

While results are not yet officially certified by the time we post this, the Associated Press on Nov. 6 projected that Donald Trump won Wisconsin’s election by a margin of about 0.9% — the largest margin in a Wisconsin presidential election in 12 years.

Wisconsin first voted Democratic in its first two presidential elections as a state, 1848 and 1852. After the Republican Party was founded in Ripon in 1854 as an anti-slavery party, the Badger State would go on to favor Republicans in 15 of the next 19 election elections.

Republican Warren G. Harding won the largest electoral margin in Wisconsin’s history in 1920, defeating Democrat James Cox 71% to 16% (with another 13% going to other candidates). Harding’s 385,000-vote margin equaled 54.9% of the presidential votes cast.  

In the following election in 1924, Wisconsin was won by Progressive Robert M. La Follette, the only time in Wisconsin’s history that it cast its electoral votes for a candidate who was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. La Follette had previously served as Wisconsin’s governor and was one of the state’s incumbent U.S. senators at the time.  

The largest margins in favor of a Democrat were won by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 with a margin equal to 32.3% of the votes case, and 1936 with a margin of 33.5%. Wisconsin ended up voting against Roosevelt in favor of Republican Thomas Dewey in 1944, however.  

Wisconsin would go on to strongly support Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and to prefer Republican Richard Nixon over Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960. Lyndon B. Johnson won Wisconsin voters over Barry Goldwater in 1964, but Wisconsin flipped back to Republican to support Nixon in 1968 and 1972. 

After picking Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford in 1976, Wisconsin then supported Ronald Reagan in back-to-back elections in 1980 and 1984. The 1988 election marked Wisconsin’s beginning as a “blue wall” state, when it voted in favor of Michael Dukakis over George H. W. Bush.