Donald Trump Lost Wisconsin by 20K Votes. Counties He Won Have Fewer Voters

Former President Donald Trump lost Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes during his 2020 presidential run against President Joe Biden.
In the 58 counties that Trump won in Wisconsin, nearly 32,000 fewer voters are heading into the Republican nominee’s 2024 battle for the White House with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Overall, there are approximately 10,000 fewer registered voters in 2020 Trump-won counties compared to Biden-won counties in Wisconsin, according to the state’s elections commission data. Of the closest counties in the 2020 election where one candidate got 50 percent, Trump-won counties have lost nearly 12,000 voters, while Biden-won counties have lost almost 3,600.
In Waukesha County, where Trump beat Biden by nearly 55,000 votes in 2020, his largest county-wide margin in Wisconsin, there are approximately 9,000 fewer registered voters. In Brown County, there are more than 10,000 less registered voters in a county Trump won by just over 10,000 votes.
Meanwhile, Harris faces a scenario in Milwaukee County, where there are 57,000 fewer voters, a county in which Biden beat Trump by more than 183,000 votes.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns via email for comment.
In an appearance on the Impolitic podcast, polling analyst Nate Silver noted that if Harris wins the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, along with the other states Democrats expect to win, she will reach the needed 270 threshold of electoral votes without needing to win other swing states.
In this scenario, Harris would also need to win one Electoral College vote from the swing district in Omaha, Nebraska, as three of the state’s five electoral votes are awarded by congressional district.
This is Harris’ most straightforward path to victory, but it is not guaranteed, according to Silver.
“Our model tends to look at things more probabilistically,” he said. “Wisconsin, for example, is a state where the polls have considerably overestimated Democrats the past couple of elections. Pennsylvania is a state where, look, Joe Biden was a home son, he was born in Scranton. And Harris doesn’t have that.”
“Those states would make me nervous,” Silver said, adding that Michigan is comparatively “safer.”
Decision Desk HQ’s forecast shows Harris’ lead decreasing in Wisconsin, where she is 1.7 points ahead of Trump, and Michigan, where she is 0.6 points ahead. In both states, her lead has decreased by 1.7 and 1 point, respectively, since September.
FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows that Trump is leading Harris by one point in Arizona and Georgia, while Harris leads by between one and two points in Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The two candidates are tied in North Carolina, the state with the closest race nationwide.
On Tuesday, Trump is visiting a manufacturing facility in Waunakee, a Madison suburb, in Democrat-dominated Dane County. Notably, Trump has never held a campaign in Dane County nor visited it during his presidential tenure.
“President Trump’s appearance will be a big shot in the arm for demoralized conservatives here,” the Dane County Republican Party Chairman Brandon Maly posted on X, formerly Twitter, when the visit was announced.
According to the Associated Press, Maly has said Trump must get at least 23 percent of the vote in Dane County to have a chance of winning statewide.
Later on Tuesday, Trump is set to attend an event at a museum in Milwaukee, the most populous city in Wisconsin and home to the highest concentration of Democratic voters, along with being the city with the second-largest number of Republicans.
Trump’s appearance in Milwaukee will also extend his reach to the city’s conservative suburbs, a region of Wisconsin where his support has dwindled but remains critical for his electoral victory.