Last week, on April 4, progressive Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, thereby creating the high court's first liberal majority in 15 years. Protasiewicz won out over her conservative opponent Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, in the contest to replace retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. Notably, the race became the highest profile and most expensive judicial election on record in the United States, with campaign spending totaling over $45 million.
While the campaign was hotly contested, in the end, Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by more than 10 points in what represented a significant shift towards the Democratic party by Wisconsin voters. Perhaps the most interesting voting pattern that emerged during this election was that the statewide voting trends were bolstered by a pivot on the part of rural voters towards the democratic candidate. While Protasiewicz did ultimately lose the rural vote, the 45% of the rural vote that she was able to accumulate constitutes a significant 5-point gain for Democrats with this demographic when compared to the 2020 presidential and 2022 Senate elections.
The headway Protasiewicz was able to make with rural voters might come as a surprise to some, given that the existence of a widening urban-rural divide with regards to Americans' political ideologies and partisan affiliations has come into sharp focus in recent years. Specifically, over the past few decades, urban voters have increasingly leaned democratic and rural voters have overwhelmingly supported republican candidates (previous posts on America's urban-rural divide here, here, and here). Moreover, Wisconsin is no outlier from these trends; like elsewhere throughout the nation, Democrats in Wisconsin have struggled to pick up votes in the countryside and in small towns (another posts on the rural vote in Wisconsin here). This is particularly evident in the rural western and northern portions of the state, where Democrats continued to watch their voting bloc erode through the 2022 election cycle. In fact, less than a year ago a post on this blog discussed multiple news reports forecasting bad news for Democrats in rural Wisconsin, highlighting how they have gone largely unsupported by the Democratic national party.
So, what changed? One predominant theory is the United States Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (recently discussed on this blog here and here). Dobbs is the Supreme Court case that reversed Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, stating that the constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
Since Dobbs, there has been an emerging national trend by which support for abortion rights has appeared to translate into electoral gains for Democrats. In August 2022, Kansas voters shocked much of the nation by rejecting an amendment to their state constitution attempting to decoding abortion rights. Strikingly, the high-turnout, pro-abortion outcome represented a 30-point deviation away from the support former president Donald Trump garnered in 2020, with the most significant and surprising departures from Republican partisan loyalty coming from small cities and rural areas (more on the Kansas abortion referendum here). Considering these results, one possible takeaway is that rural voters, at least in Kansas and where abortion is concerned, are not completely behind every aspect of the leading Republican agenda.
It is likely that similar forces were at play in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election last week. Abortion rose to the fore of debate surrounding the election as, post-Dobbs, it was almost guaranteed that access to abortion in the state would hinge on whether it was progressives or conservatives that would secure a narrow majority on the state's supreme court. Wisconsin's current governing law on the matter is a 1849 statute criminalizing abortion in virtually all cases, with a singular exception carved out for situation in which it would be necessary to save the pregnant person's life.
Adopting a slightly controversial strategy, Protasiewicz openly campaigned on the issue of abortion, not only publicly announcing her personal pro-choice beliefs and collecting endorsements from pro-choice groups, such as EMILY's List, but also running ads painting Kelly as a staunch pro-lifer who would surely uphold the state's 1849 abortion ban. Kelly, on the other hand, feigned impartiality, but accrued endorsements from the state's top three anti-abortion groups, including Wisconsin Right to Life, and was perceived as very likely to act in accordance with his well-documented pro-life stances.
While it is difficult to assert an exact or singular cause, the theory that Protasiewicz's pro-choice position contributed to her victory is supported by a recent Marquette University Law School Poll indicating that a majority of Wisconsin citizens support abortion in most or all cases. That said, the election was also undoubtedly influenced by the other hot-button issues spotlighted during the campaign, including gerrymandering (Wisconsin's district maps are considered among the most undemocratic in the country) and election administration (Wisconsin is a perennial swing state in which the most recent presidential election results in favor of Joe Biden were upheld by the state supreme court by a margin of only one vote).
Regardless of the exact mechanics of the outcome of Wisconsin's Supreme Court election, Democrats should take note and stop writing off rural voters as a lost cause. In conjunction with the referendum in Kansas and other rural Democratic success stories, such as the rise of John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Protasiewicz's gains in rural Wisconsin suggest that rural counties might be much more politically contestable than many believe. It is even possible that inroads with rural America could be the key to Democratic success in 2024... but only if the party begins investing sufficient time and money into rural communities, constituents, and candidates.
2 comments:
This is an excellent and informative post on a very significant race! I think it is very clear that the "Dobbs-effect" is real and that the map is favorable to Democrats going forward, given the Supreme Court's complete over-reach in a decision that oridnary people find to be grotesque. I wonder why - after the substantial Democratic overperformance in the midterms and their recent resounding success in special elections and judicial races, much of the media has been shy to assert that the Republicans have an albatross around their neck and will struggle in the new political re-alignment created post-Dobbs, especially considering how they failed to detect how important the issue of abortion was heading into the 2022 midterms. I feel like there was a lot of media figure "soul searching" and recalibration after Trump's unexpected 2016 victory, but after the Democrats consistent overperformence recently there hasn't been a parallel readjustment of assumptions.
This is such an important post and topic. Thank you for sharing! I think the explanation you described for this shift rendered by the United States Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This seems to be leading to increased support for abortion rights translating into electoral gains for Democrats is definitely a huge factor. Although I am not versed in the world of political campaigns, I think that Protasiewicz openly campaigning on her pro-choice stance, contrasting it with her conservative opponent Daniel Kelly's perceived pro-life position, and collecting endorsements from pro-choice groups was risky. Yet it proved a smart move. I’m glad that it resonated with a majority of Wisconsin voters!
I feel like Republican voters are largely misunderstood, especially after the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. Some cite resentment (more on that can be found in this post [http://legalruralism.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-impact-of-rural-resentment-on-how.html]), and others cite poor education. Yet contrary to the common connotation that rural people vote against their own interests, many times they vote for their most important interests. Honestly, neither candidate usually aligns with every interest of a voter, and voters typically have to choose between two imperfect candidates. Specifically in the 2020 election, voters were told to “choose the lesser evil.” [https://reason.com/volokh/2020/10/30/why-biden-is-a-lesser-evil-than-trump/]
The election outcome in Wisconsin, along with the Kansas abortion referendum and other rural Democratic success stories, underscores the need for Democrats to stop writing off rural voters as a lost cause. Rural counties may be more politically contestable than previously believed, and investment in rural communities, constituents, and candidates could be key to Democratic success in future elections, including the 2024 presidential election.
My experience with rural Wisconsinites, which may be similar to rural areas in other states, is that they choose pro-business and pro-farm policies, gun rights, and overall patriotism. Furthermore, the feeling of distrust for Hillary Clinton was overwhelming. Rural voters I know felt as if Hillary was the personification of urban-elitism. They were upset that she didn’t talk about any issues they were facing, and most of all they were offended that she portrayed them as being uneducated and small-minded. Her “basket of deplorables” generalization was the final push in losing many of these rural voters, as they heard this as contemptuous of rural Americans.
Yet, rural people are not what Hillary describes and are educated enough to be trusted with voting. Wisconsin voted for Obama before it flipped red for Trump, and Obama won most rural counties.
I’m so glad that Judge Janet Protasiewicz's victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, particularly her gains in rural areas, suggests that rural voters may not be as firmly aligned with Republicans as many people previously thought. The rural vote does matter and should be considered as an important swing vote! Democrats should take note of this shift and consider investing more time and resources in rural communities to capitalize on this potential opportunity for electoral success in the future.
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