In the general election, Donald Trump unexpectedly won Wisconsin by a narrow margin of 0.77%, with 47.22% of the total votes over the 46.45% of Hillary Clinton. Wisconsin emerged as the tipping-point state in the 2016 election.
Trump's victory in Wisconsin was attributed to overwhelming and underestimated support from white working-class citizens in the state's rural areas, a demographic that had previously tended to either vote for the Democratic candidate or did not vote at all.[2][3][4]
By winning Wisconsin, Trump became the first Republican candidate to win the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984. He also became the first Republican to win a majority in Iron County since 1920.[a] Wisconsin weighed in for this election as 2.9% more Republican than the nation-at-large, the first time it voted to the right of the nation since 2000.[5] Wisconsin was also one of eleven states to have voted twice for Bill Clinton which Hillary Clinton lost. This is the only election since 1960 in which the Democratic nominee won the popular vote without Wisconsin, and only the third since the Great Depression (the other being 1944).
Primaries
Wisconsin held its presidential primaries on April 5, 2016.
Democratic primary
Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee, February 2016
Wisconsin joined the Union in May 1848 and has participated in all elections from 1848 onwards. Since 1900, Wisconsin has been won by the Democrats and Republicans the same number of times.[8] Republican-turned-Progressive Robert M. La Follette Sr. carried the state in the 1924 presidential election.
The state voted for the Democratic nominee in the seven elections from 1988 to 2012, although sometimes by small margins, as it was in 1992, 2000, and 2004. There were other occasions, in contrast, when the margin of victory was substantial, such as 1996, 2008, and 2012.[8]
Polls consistently showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leading by a margin of two to eight points in a four-way race.[17] The last poll published prior to the election was by SurveyMonkey and had Hillary Clinton with a two-point lead over Donald Trump.[17] Clinton never visited the state during the general election campaign, while Trump visited six times.[18] On election day, Trump ended up carrying the state by less than a point, a difference of an average of five to six points from most pre-election polling.[17] Prior to the election, many major news networks and professional and election analysts predicted the state as either lean or likely Democratic. Wisconsin's unexpected swing to Trump, along with two other Rust Belt states (Pennsylvania, Michigan), was the deciding factor in his win of 306–232 over Clinton, despite her garnering a plurality of the votes. Clinton referenced the loss in her memoir What Happened: "If there's one place where we were caught by surprise, it was Wisconsin. Polls showed us comfortably ahead, right up until the end. They also looked good for the Democrat running for Senate, Russ Feingold."[19] Interestingly, Trump did not win Wisconsin unlike the other states that he flipped by finding new voters, rather retaining more of Romney's vote, as the total votes cast in Wisconsin declined from 2012.
Results
2016 United States presidential election in Wisconsin
On November 25, 2016, with 90 minutes remaining on the deadline to petition for a recount to the state's electoral body, 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed for a recount of the election results in Wisconsin. She signaled she intended to file for similar recounts in the subsequent days in the states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.[21] On November 26, the Clinton campaign announced that they were joining the recount effort in Wisconsin.[22] Trump filed a lawsuit to halt the process, but it was rejected by a federal judge.[23]
The final result of the recount confirmed Trump's victory in Wisconsin, where he gained a net 131 votes.[24] Trump gained 837 additional votes, while Clinton gained 706 additional votes.[25]
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