Milwaukee is a Democratic city, but it has more Republicans than you might think

When former president Donald Trump accepts the 2024 Republican nomination, he will do so in a city that he lost four years ago by 59 points.

There is nothing strange about that. Political conventions are held in cities, and almost every city big enough to have a baseball team or host a national convention is heavily Democratic.

Milwaukee is no exception. It is very blue, and bluer than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Polling suggests that only one in seven voters in the state’s biggest city identifies as a Republican.

These are not the voters we think of when we talk about Milwaukee’s role in the fight for Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in 2024.

But in terms of raw votes, these urban Republicans are plenty important. They may be vastly outnumbered in their home community, but there are more GOP voters in the city of Milwaukee than in any other community in Wisconsin.  Trump got almost 50,000 votes in the city four years ago (though some of those came from independents and Democrats).

So, who are these Milwaukee Republicans? And do they differ politically from GOP voters elsewhere in Wisconsin?

To help answer those questions, Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin used years of statewide surveys to assemble a demographic and political profile of the Milwaukee Republican voter.

And what it tells us is that GOP voters in the city of Milwaukee differ in several respects from GOP voters statewide.

They are more racially diverse. They are younger. They are a little more moderate.  And while most have a positive view of former President Donald Trump, they are not as pro-Trump as their fellow Republicans elsewhere in Wisconsin. (These surveys and his research were prepared long before Saturday's assassination attempt on Trump.)

To get a reliably large sample of such a small share of the state’s electorate, Franklin pooled the 37 statewide surveys he has done since Trump was elected president in 2016, creating a sample of almost 400 registered voters in the city who identify with the Republican Party.   Then he compared what the polling tells us about Milwaukee Republicans with what the polling tells us about GOP voters statewide.

How Milwaukee Republicans differ from the rest of Wisconsin

There are some notable differences:

Race and ethnicity. Milwaukee Republicans are 74% white, 11% Hispanic and 7% Black, in the Marquette polling. By comparison, Republicans statewide are more than 90% white and just 3% Hispanic. And in the state as a whole, the share of Republicans who are Black is less than one half of one percent.

Age . Almost 1 in 5 Republican voters in Milwaukee is under 30, compared to around 1 in 10 Republicans statewide.

Marital status. Republicans in Milwaukee are a lot less likely to be married (43%) than Republicans in the state as a whole (68%).

Religion . Born-again Protestants make up a smaller share of GOP voters in Milwaukee (23%) than they do statewide (27%).  Non-religious voters make up a slightly larger share (11%) of Milwaukee Republicans than they do statewide (8%). And a smaller share of Milwaukee Republicans goes to church weekly (51%) than does statewide (57%).

In short, Republican voters in Milwaukee are younger, more diverse, and a little less religious than their counterparts in the rest of the state — just as Milwaukee itself is younger and a lot more diverse than the state as a whole.

Statewide, blue-collar white voters (whites without a college degree) are a dominant demographic majority of the GOP, accounting for just over 60% of Republican voters.  But they represent just under half (49%) of Milwaukee Republicans.

There are also political differences.

Statewide, 80% of GOP voters call themselves conservatives and 17% call themselves moderate. But in the city of Milwaukee, 67% of Republicans identify as conservative and 27% as moderate.

Republicans in Milwaukee are less “conservative” on the issue of abortion than Republicans elsewhere.  In fact, almost half of GOP voters in the city of Milwaukee think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to only a third of Republicans statewide.

More: Democrats lean into anniversary of Dobbs abortion decision to mobilize Wisconsin voters

Finally, Milwaukee Republicans are a little less pro-Trump and a little less anti-Biden than GOP voters in the rest of the state. President Joe Biden has 7% favorability rating among Wisconsin Republicans over the years but a 17% favorability rating among Milwaukee Republicans.

Trump’s favorability rating over the past seven years among Wisconsin Republicans averages out to 84%. But it is 10 points lower than that (74%) among Milwaukee Republicans, with 20% of Milwaukee Republicans viewing him unfavorably. (Because these are seven-year averages, they are boosted by Trump’s very high ratings from Republicans while he was president; those ratings declined after 2020).

These Milwaukee Republicans will help determine the role the city plays in the 2024 presidential election.

And there’s a spotlight on Milwaukee. It’s the host of the Republican National Convention, of course. It’s the biggest city in a top battleground state. It’s the city that Trump reportedly referred to as “horrible” in private comments to Republican members of Congress (though the context is disputed).  It is also a place where Democrats perennially worry whether they will get the turnouts they need to maximize their big-city vote.

Democrats' victory margins in Milwaukee have expanded

Below are the Democratic margins for president in the city of Milwaukee since the 1990s, with the first figure representing the party’s advantage in percentage points (winning the city 80% to 20% would show up here as a 60-point margin), and the second number representing the party’s raw vote margin (winning the city 150,000 to 50,000 would show up here as a margin of 100,000 votes):

2020: 59.2 points (146,247)

2016: 58.1 points (143,246)

2012: 59.6 points (170,831)

2008: 56.8 points (155,751)

2004: 44.5 points (123,161)

2000: 39.4 points (96,523)

1996: 42.3 points (87,728)

1992: 31.6 points (85,373)

As you can see from these numbers, Democrats have been winning a growing share of the Milwaukee vote, with the party’s presidential point margins rising from the 30s and 40s in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s to almost 60 points in the past three elections.

In 2020, Biden got 78.8% of the city vote and Trump got 19.6% — a Biden edge of roughly 4 to 1.

But the number that really matters in an election — the winning vote margin — peaked in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama was on the ballot and won the city by 155,751 and 170,831 votes respectively.

In the two elections since then, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Biden approximated Obama’s point margins in the city but not his vote margins, because Milwaukee generated fewer votes overall. And it generated fewer votes because of a combination of population loss and lower turnout relative to 2012.

Within the city, the biggest proportion of Republican voters can be found in the far southern and southwestern wards, traditionally whiter and more conservative than the rest of Milwaukee.  In 2020, Biden won the two southwestern aldermanic districts, the 11 ^th and 13 ^th , by 14 and 22 points, according to an analysis by John Johnson, research fellow at Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center. Biden won the city’s other aldermanic districts by anywhere from 49 to 87 points.

In this election, national polling points to potential gains by Trump among Black and especially Hispanic voters, who together make up more than 40% of Milwaukee voters (compared to 8% statewide).

If that happens, it will be a challenge for Biden to replicate his 2020 numbers in Milwaukee.

But Milwaukee’s vastly outnumbered Republican voters — a little less “Trumpy“ and a little more moderate than the party as a whole — will also figure into that equation.

Craig Gilbert provides Wisconsin political analysis as a fellow with Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Prior to the fellowship, Gilbert reported on politics for 35 years at the Journal Sentinel, the last 25 in its Washington Bureau. His column continues that independent reporting tradition and goes through the established Journal Sentinel editing process.

Follow him on Twitter: @Wisvoter .

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee is a Democratic city, but it has more Republicans than you might think