Wisconsin’s GOP-tilted congressional map results in unrepresentative delegation
The state’s legislative maps signed by Gov. Tony Evers in February closely reflected the will of the voters, but Republicans won 75% of the state’s U.S. House seats.
Wisconsin voters split almost evenly in the November 2024 presidential and Senate elections, with both races decided by less than 1% of the vote. While new legislative district boundaries produced a comparably competitive contest for control of the Wisconsin Assembly, the state’s GOP-leaning congressional boundaries again produced a 75% Republican U.S. House delegation.
President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by about 29,000 votes in Wisconsin out of more than 3.3 million, winning 49.6%-48.8%. Democratic incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin won 49.4%-48.5% over Republican Eric Hovde, also by a margin of about 29,000 votes.
Despite the evenly divided statewide electorate, Republicans kept their six-to-two-seat edge in the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Only one race proved somewhat competitive: Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden won reelection by about 3 points in the 3rd District over Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke. Van Orden had drawn headlines for verbally abusive behavior toward constituents and Capitol Hill teenage pages.
The state’s congressional lines, adopted in 2022 by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, were proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers after a conservative majority on the court insisted that the redistricted maps make the “least changes” possible from the existing 6-2 GOP map. The nonpartisan Gerrymandering Project at Princeton University graded the new maps an “F” based on their “significant Republican advantage.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, which now has a 4-3 progressive-leaning majority, said in March that it would not hear a challenge to the congressional boundaries filed by Democratic Wisconsin voters. The court struck down legislative maps gerrymandered to advantage Republicans in December 2023, leading to the adoption of new Senate and Assembly districts starting in the 2024 election.
Both the new Assembly and Senate maps received “A” grades from the Gerrymandering Project with praise for their partisan fairness.
With the new maps in place, Democrats gained 10 Assembly seats, leaving Republicans with a 54-45 majority. They also picked up four Senate seats, resulting in a 18-15 Republican majority. Sixteen of the chamber’s 33 seats were on the ballot in 2024, and the other 17 will be up for a vote in 2026.
A Nov. 15 analysis by researcher John Johnson at the Marquette University Law School, found the new Assembly maps closely reflected the statewide results: Trump won in 50 of the 99 districts, as did Baldwin.
Jay Heck is the executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, a nonpartisan government reform group that advocates for fair redistricting and an end to gerrymandering. In an interview with the Wisconsin Independent, he praised the new legislative maps. “The fact that Democrats picked up 10 seats in a year where the Republican candidate for president won the state demonstrates, I think, that the districts were very competitive and very fair,” he observed.
Heck noted that the state’s geographic makeup gives Republicans a slight advantage at the congressional level, given that Democratic voters tend to be concentrated in the Milwaukee and Madison areas, but said, “there could be maps that could be drawn that would be better.”
With the impending retirement of progressive state Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Wisconsin voters will soon decide whether to continue the 4-3 majority that required the fair legislative maps or to give control back to the conservatives who facilitated the GOP gerrymanders. A statewide primary will be held for her open seat on Feb. 18, 2025; the top two candidates will advance to an April 1 general election.
“If the conservative seized control of the court, the question is whether or not they will entertain some lawsuit to undo the current maps,” Heck said. “We would argue that it would be difficult for them to do that, because this is, in fact, a law that’s been put into place, rather than just a court decision. But that doesn’t stop courts from doing what they want to do.”
