In battleground Wisconsin, Republicans and Democrats have both grown less moderate

In the struggle for primacy between red and blue in battleground Wisconsin, both sides can claim they’ve made some headway over the past decade.

Democrats have won more big elections (and by bigger margins) in recent years than Republicans.

Yet paradoxically, slightly more voters now identify as Republicans than Democrats in Wisconsin, according to extensive polling by the Marquette Law School. That is a significant shift from a decade ago, when Democrats had an edge of 4 points in party identification.

What does that polling tell us about each party’s voting base in this state, where the GOP is now holding its 2024 national convention to nominate former president Donald Trump?

Who makes up the Republican voting coalition in Wisconsin?

How do Republican voters compare to Democratic voters, demographically and geographically?

And how do they compare to the GOP base of more than a decade ago?

To create a profile of each party's voters in Wisconsin, Marquette pollster Charles Franklin drew on several years of statewide surveys."

The first and most obvious takeaway is that while there is a great deal of overlap in the composition of the two parties, the demographic mix is quite different.

For example, Wisconsin is an overwhelmingly white and predominately blue-collar state.

But white, blue-collar voters — defined here as whites without a four-year college degree — make up a far larger share of Republican voters (62%) than Democratic voters (45%).

Put in other terms, non-college whites are a big part of the Democratic coalition in Wisconsin, but they are the dominant share of the GOP coalition.

Here are some basic demographic comparisons between the make-up of the two parties in Wisconsin, drawn from Marquette’s polling. For the present-day composition of each party, Franklin combined 14 statewide surveys he has conducted since Trump left the White House in January of 2021.  That is a pool of almost 12,000 registered voters.  The numbers below refer to voters who identify with either major party, but do not include so-called “leaners,” self-described independents who say they lean toward one party:

Race : Republicans in Wisconsin are 93% white, 3% Hispanic and 1% Black; Democrats are 83% white, 4% Hispanic and 8% Black. Both parties are overwhelmingly white, and Hispanic voters make up a similar but very small share of each party, but African-Americans make up a far bigger part of the Democratic base than GOP base.

Gender and marriage status: Republicans are 53% male. Democrats are 65% female, a pretty massive gender gap. The contrast is also dramatic when you factor in marital status. For example, married men account for 36% of Wisconsin Republicans but only 20% of Democrats. Unmarried women account for 30% of Democrats but just 14% of Republicans.

Education: College-educated voters (a four-year degree or higher) represent 33% of GOP voters, compared to 42% of Democratic voters.

Religion: About a quarter (26%) of GOP voters in Wisconsin describe themselves as “born again” or “evangelical,” compared to less than a tenth (9%) of Democrats.  Only 8% of GOP voters describe themselves as having no religion, compared to 32% of Democrats.  More than half (53%) of Republicans go to church weekly or monthly, compared to 29% of Democrats.

Community type: Republicans are far more likely (47%) to live in rural places than Democrats (30%) and Democrats are far more likely to live in urban places (39%) than Republicans (16%).  Rural voters outnumber urban voters by about 3-to-1 within the GOP, while within the Democratic Party, urban voters outnumber rural voters.

Region: The differences in how Democratic and Republican voters are distributed across the Wisconsin map is obvious in every major election here. It is also clear in the polling. For example, only 9% of self-identified Republicans live in the state’s biggest county, Milwaukee, compared to 19% of Democrats. Only 12% of Republicans live in the 11-county Madison media market, compared to 24% of Democrats. On the flip side, 18% of Republicans live in the suburban “WOW Counties” outside Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington) compared to 8% of Democrats. And 46% of Republicans live outside the Milwaukee and Madison TV markets (i.e. in the west, center and north of the state), compared to 37% of Democrats.

How has the demographic makeup of GOP voters changed over time?

It has certainly changed with respect to geography. The share of GOP voters from urban areas has declined from 20% in the years 2015-16 to 16% today. The share from the four-county metro Milwaukee area is also down, from 32% to 27%. Meanwhile, the share from the state’s northern and western counties is up.

The GOP voting coalition is also more secular than it used to be, which may surprise some people, but this is in keeping with the decline of religious identification and frequent church attendance in the overall population.  Monthly or weekly churchgoers have gone from 67% of Republicans to 53% over the past decade or so, and the share of Republicans who are born-again has declined from 31% to 26%.  (In the Democratic Party, which was more secular to begin with, these declines have been even sharper).

Catholics make up a bigger share of the GOP in Wisconsin today (32%) than a decade ago (29%), while they make up a smaller share of Democrats today (24%) than they did a decade ago (28%).

In terms of education, the share of non-college voters has grown slightly within the GOP, while the share of college-educated voters has grown significantly (from 36% to 42%) within the Democratic Party.

The gender makeup of the GOP has changed over the past decade, as the party has gone from 50% men and 50% women to 53% men and 47% women. (Democrats have gone from 62% female to 65%).

The most important shift in Republican voters, however, may be a political one, not a demographic one.  The share of GOP voters who describe themselves as conservative has risen from 77% to 80% over the past decade. And within that number, the share who say they are “very conservative” has gone from 20% in the 2012-14 period to 25% in the 2021-24 period. The share of Republicans who are self-described moderates has dropped from 19% to 17%.

Democrats have also moved further from the center, by this measure. In fact, these changes are more dramatic: self-described liberals have risen from 46% of the party to 62% since 2012-14. And within that number, the share calling themselves “very liberal” has risen from 13% to 21%.

In other words, the two parties have grown more polarized based on how their own voters describe their political philosophy. Moderates have declined as a share of both parties, while growing as a share of independent voters. Conservatives have shrunk as a share of Democrats from 17% in 2012-14 to 7% today. And liberals have dropped as a share of the GOP from 3% to just 1%.

This is another reminder that while there are real demographic differences between the parties, those differences aren’t nearly as big as the difference in political attitudes.

The numbers are also a reminder that neither party is monolithic in its population, and neither party can be too neatly summed up using demographic shorthand.

For example, a majority of GOP voters in Wisconsin are men, a huge majority are white, and a big majority are “non-college.”  You might say based on these numbers that the typical Wisconsin Republican is blue-collar, white and male. But the share of Republicans who check all three of those boxes — who are non-college white men — is far less than half; it’s about a third.

Lots of Republicans belong to Democratic-leaning demographic categories: 14% are women with college degrees; 33% are college-educated; 46% are infrequent churchgoers or never go to church at all.

The inverse is true of Democrats: 29% are weekly or monthly churchgoers; 30% are rural; and more than 40% are white, non-college men and women.

Each party in Wisconsin relies on the votes of hundreds of thousands of people who don’t fit into the prevailing demographic profile of that party.

At the same time, the polling underscores which segments of the electorate carry the greatest weight within each party, and how that mix is changing over time.

It also shows which fault lines are growing wider between Democrats and Republicans.

In Wisconsin, the two parties are polarizing by ideology, by geography, by gender, and by education.

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: In battleground Wisconsin, Republicans and Democrats have both grown less moderate