2020 Democratic Candidates Seeking to Reverse 2016 Wisconsin Loss: NPR

Here's something the Democrats thought they knew in the last presidential campaign: Wisconsin was safe. It was a lock for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But when the votes were counted, the Republican Donald Trump was upset.

By 2020, Democrats apparently do not take the state for granted.

Although the first nominations competitions in Iowa and New Hampshire are in about 11 months and the Wisconsin primaries are not in place until April 7 of next year, the campaign stops have already started.

Senator Amy Klobuchar spoke two weeks ago at a bicycles and coffee shop packed in Eau Claire. This was the first step of his first ever campaign trip since his nomination a week earlier. Klobuchar has highlighted a family history in the Midwest, including in Wisconsin.

"I do not come from money," began the candidate. "My mother was a teacher, my father was a journalist, my grandfather was an iron ore miner, and in Wisconsin, during the Great Depression, my grandfather worked in a pie shop."

Getting to Eau Claire was a practical choice – not far from the Wisconsin border with Minnesota, Klobuchar's state of residence. Iowa is also right next door.

The message sent to Democrats around the world was also symbolic: a traditionally blue battlefield will not be ignored this time.

The missed opportunity of Clinton

In the 2016 election, the Clinton campaign had a relaxed approach to Wisconsin. From the time she accepted the appointment, late July, until election day, Clinton never campaigned in person in the state. She has not visited the state in the last few crucial months, leaving this task to her surrogate mothers.

Democrats had good reason to adopt this approach. After all, the last Republican to have captured the state's electoral votes was President Ronald Reagan in 1984 – and in 2016, polls in that state showed that this trend was continuing.

"My poll and the 33 other polls in the state showed that Clinton was leading with an average of about 6 points," said pollster Charles Franklin of the University's Faculty of Law. Marquette.

Nevertheless, Trump's campaign treated Wisconsin as a hotly contested battleground. He made several visits during the last hundred days of the campaign. At a rally in the city of Eau Claire, in the west of the country, in a more rural part of the state, he predicted: "In just a week, we Let's go to the great state of Wisconsin, and we'll win back the White House – it's going to happen, people. "

In the end, Trump won Wisconsin with only 22,177 votes, a margin of less than 1%. It was part of a trio of upheavals in previously blue states including Michigan and Pennsylvania – giving him the margin he needed to win the White House.

Of course, many factors come into play in this result, but pollster Charles Franklin says that two events have occurred. Trump was well behaved in the west of the rural state, a more Republican region, but that Barack Obama had managed to take away. In addition, adds Franklin, the participation rate in the largest urban area of ​​the state, the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, was significantly lower than expected. This resulted in fewer votes for Clinton in a big city where she needed to increase her score.

The upset victories of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania combined were decisive for the victory of Trump's constituency.

Talk to everyone, everywhere

The democrats took notes. Klobuchar barely has Wisconsin for her this time. Another potential candidate for the Democratic presidency has recently yielded, former Beto representative O & # Rourke. During a visit to the technical college in the Milwaukee area, he said it was good for the state to draw attention. "Wisconsin – maybe like other parts of the country, including maybe even where I'm coming from, in the far west of Texas – is too often overlooked," he said. -he declares. O & # 39; Rourke said that he always decided to participate or not in the race for the presidency.

At the same time, Martha Laning, president of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said she had also heard other candidates talk about her first visits to the state.

"It sends a message to the whole nation," Laning told NPR. Among the candidates, she adds that it is obvious that after what happened in 2016, "they will take nothing for granted and they stop in Wisconsin for the moment" .

Laning stresses, however, that candidate visits are only part of it. Yes, Clinton learned the absence last time, but she recognizes that Wisconsin Democrats must be more effective in reaching voters in all areas of the state – urban and rural, blue and red.

She said the 2018 mid-term sessions were a good start, as it was a very strong Democratic year in Wisconsin. They easily re-elected Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin and defeated Republican Governor Scott Walker, who was seeking a third term.

Laning says the lesson of the 2016 defeat is that you have to talk to voters everywhere, and if you're recording an unexpected vote here or a vote here, it can make the difference when there's another election with a very fine margin.

Just ask President Trump.