While the primary in Arizona and the caucuses in Utah are still going on, it’s not too early to look at the next big contest, the Wisconsin primary on April 5.
Wisconsin’s primaries have been pivotal before. In 1944, when Wisconsin also voted on April 5, the Republicans’ previous nominee Wendell Willkie received only 5 percent of the votes in Wisconsin, to 73 percent for Gen. Douglas MacArthur (a Wisconsin native) and 15 percent for New York Gov. Thomas Dewey; Willkie withdrew from the race and died in October. MacArthur remained in the Pacific theater and Dewey was nominated and won 46 percent of the vote against Franklin Roosevelt.
In 1968, Wisconsin voted on April 2, two days after incumbent Lyndon Johnson shocked the nation by withdrawing from the race and Eugene McCarthy, who had come close to beating Johnson in New Hampshire March 12, won 56 percent of the votes to 35 percent for LBJ.
What links these two results together? Wisconsin is among our most German states, with about half of residents reporting German ancestry. In politics, German-Americans have tended toward pacifist/isolationist/dovish points of view. In 1944, Willkie was an outspoken supporter of Franklin Roosevelt’s internationalist policies; Wisconsin Republicans preferred MacArthur, who was believed to support an Asia-first policy and to be skeptical of Roosevelt’s concentration on the European theater. In 1968 McCarthy was running as an opponent of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war.
Wisconsin’s pacifist/isolationist/dovish tendencies have also been apparent in presidential general elections. In 1944 and 1988 it supported relatively isolationist/dovish candidates of opposite parties (Republican Thomas Dewey and Democrat Michael Dukakis) who lost nationwide. It was one of 12 states that voted for Dewey and one of 10 voting for Dukakis.
What does all this have to do with Wisconsin’s Republican primary this year? Well, take a look at this story by the excellent Craig Gilbert in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Trump has been running no better than 30 percent in the few Wisconsin public polls, and Gilbert finds he is particularly strongly opposed in the ring of counties, heavily German-American, around Milwaukee, especially in suburban Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington Counties. Unlike most suburban counties in large Northern metropolitan areas, WOW (as he calls them) have remained staunchly Republican, providing huge margins for Scott Walker in his three races for governor. In these counties and across southern Wisconsin, more Republicans have unfavorable than favorable feelings toward Trump.
In other words, Wisconsin is unfavorable territory for Trump, perhaps as unfavorable as the Dutch-American counties in Michigan and Iowa about which I wrote about last weekend. It’s consistent with Trump’s weak showing in the caucuses in heavily German-American Iowa, Minnesota and Kansas, and it suggests poor prospects for Trump in the primaries in heavily German-American Nebraska May 10 and South Dakota June 7 as well as the caucuses in heavily German-American North Dakota April 1.
Why would German-Americans be less amenable to Trump’s appeal than Americans generally? One hypothesis is that they tend to have high degrees of social-connectedness, like the Dutch-Americans and Mormons who seem relatively immune to Trumpmania. Another is that they have an aversion to what appear to them to be Trump’s reckless threats, similar to their long-term aversion to foreign military conflicts.
Wisconsin elects its delegates not only statewide but winner-take-all by congressional districts. Gilbert’s data suggest that, if Wisconsin’s anti-Trump voters coalesce around Ted Cruz and don’t allow their votes to be diverted by the attractive nuisance of John Kasich, Trump could meet the same fate in Wisconsin as Wendell Willkie and Lyndon Johnson.
