Gilbert: How small voting shifts made Wisconsin the closest state in the nation

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : Then Trump won it by 25.2 points in 2016, 25.3 points in 2020 and 27.4 points in 2024.
65% : Trump won this combined suburban region by nearly 9 points in 2024.
61% : In other words, Trump made huge rural inroads in 2016, consolidated those gains in 2020, and made new gains in 2024.
61% : In communities that cast fewer than 500 votes, Trump won by more than 32 points and his winning margin increased by 3.5 points over 2020.
59% : This election saw some intriguing but modest urban gains for Trump.
56% : Translated into actual votes, Trump won Wisconsin's towns by 281,017 votes in 2024 after winning them by 255,784 in 2020.
53% : But the better news for Trump was that the shift was far more modest in 2024 than it was in 2016 or 2020.
47% : In slightly bigger communities (that generated between 500 and 1,000 votes) Trump won by a little less (29 points) and his winning margin increased by a little less (2.5 points).
46% : Trump made small gains with Black voters and bigger gains with Latino voters, both a much larger share of the electorate in Milwaukee than other places in Wisconsin.
45% : For example, in 2020 Democrats saw a net gain in the metro Milwaukee suburbs of about 25,000 votes compared to 2016, enough by itself to cost Trump the state.
36% : And of course, the 2028 election won't have Trump on the ballot.
34% : But 2024 showed that Trump hadn't "maxed out" his vote in rural Wisconsin.
34% : Trump also reduced his losing margin in several other cities.
20% : Trump lost them collectively by 12.7 points after losing them by 14.4 points in 2020.
18% : But because his losing margin was smaller in 2024 (56 points) than 2020 (59 points), Trump lost the city by about 6,500 fewer votes than he did four years earlier.

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