Republican House candidate Tom Tiffany won the special election for Wisconsin’s 7th District with ease, beating his Democratic opponent by about 14 points. Democrats want to claim this was some sort of referendum on President Trump and the GOP.
This suggestion is a dubious bit of political pro-wrestling monologue. Wisconsin’s 7th District, a rural area made up of mostly white, working-class people, is precisely the sort of area Trump has nudged toward the Republican Party. He won the district by more than 20 points in 2016. And former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, who stepped down late last year for family reasons, had held this seat for nearly a decade, consistently beating his Democratic rivals by at least a 15-point margin.
Because Tiffany’s margin of victory was 5 or 6 points smaller than Trump’s 2016 win, Democrats seem to think a realignment is in the works. Tricia Zunker, Tiffany’s Democratic opponent, claims she “laid the groundwork for this seat to turn blue in November,” which is when Tiffany and Zunker will face each other at the ballot box once again. She then described her loss as a “moral victory,” while the Wisconsin Democratic Party described it as proof that Trump’s foothold in the rural Midwest was slipping.
“For Trump to win reelection, red areas have to get redder to balance out blue areas getting bluer,” Wisconsin Democratic Party spokeswoman Courtney Beyer said.
If the idea here is that Democrats are about to win back white, working-class, and rural voters, that seems rather doubtful. This district went blue for former President Barack Obama in 2008, as it elected Democratic Rep. David Obey to his 21st and last term in the U.S. House. The district was already in GOP hands and trending Republican when Mitt Romney barely carried it in 2012. Trump has put it squarely into the red category.
Besides, several factors could explain Tiffany’s smaller margin. One of which is the global pandemic that very likely affected voter turnout, especially since voters were required to vote in-person on Tuesday. The 7th District has not been hit hard by the coronavirus compared with the state’s urban areas, but poll workers and voters were still loath to leave their homes on Tuesday, according to the New York Times.
Wisconsin’s political climate might indeed be changing. The state’s recent Supreme Court election, in which conservatives lost an important seat, is proof of that. But Democrats are looking for a victory that does not exist — at least, not in Wisconsin’s 7th District.
