The entire nation will vote on the next president of the United States this fall, but the election will likely come down to seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Given the outsized importance of these states, it's worth taking a closer look at the data we have in each of them – not just where the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump stands today, but also where the presidential race stands today Each candidate's path to victory and which issues could tip the scales in the election. Next in our series is the state that decided the 2020 election: Wisconsin.

The story

For decades, Wisconsin was an important building block in the Democrats' “blue wall”: As long as they won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, they had a good chance of winning the Electoral College. Wisconsin, along with the other two states, voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election from 1992 to 2012.

But this winning streak was broken in 2016: Trump won Wisconsin by 0.8 percentage points, helping him become president. This ensured that Wisconsin would be closely contested in the 2020 election, and when the dust settled, President Joe Biden prevailed. In fact, Wisconsin was the “tipping point state” in this election. If you take all the states and rank them in order from most Democrats in the 2020 election to most Republicans, then you add up their electoral votes. Wisconsin was the state that gave Biden its 270th electoral vote.

But Biden won Wisconsin by just 0.6 points, while he won the national popular vote by 4.5 points. That meant Wisconsin was still more Republican than the nation as a whole, which is more similar to 2016 than 2012 or 2008, when Wisconsin was more comfortably Democratic. So the Badger State remains firmly in play in this election.

The 2024 polls

Wisconsin's importance in this election should be clear to anyone who looks at polls in the state. As of Oct. 17 at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, Harris leads Trump 48.1 percent to 47.5 percent in the state polling average — virtually the same margin by which Democrats won the state in 2020.

If the polls are accurate, that means Wisconsin continues to be about 2 points redder than the entire country. At the same time, Harris is ahead of Trump by 2.4 points in the national poll average of 538.

The demographics

Looking at the crosstabs of these polls, it looks like Wisconsin is experiencing the same demographic trends as the rest of the country: White voters are becoming more Democratic, while voters of color are becoming more Republican.

For example, white Wisconsin residents currently support Trump by one point, according to a direct average of crosstabs of Wisconsin polls conducted last month*. But according to exit polls, they supported Trump by 6 points in the 2020 election. In contrast, according to crosstabs of black and Hispanic Wisconsinites, these two groups have each shifted toward Trump by more than 20 points!

However, there are two major caveats here. First, Wisconsin's nonwhite population is quite small. The state's voting-age population is 86 percent white, 5 percent black and 4 percent Hispanic. That makes it the whitest of the seven key swing states – meaning any racial voting shifts in the 2024 election will have only a muted impact here.

The second caveat is that with black and Hispanic populations so small, it is difficult for pollsters to get a large enough sample of these voters in Wisconsin. This leaves their black and Hispanic crosstabs subject to a high margin of error.

Even more important in Wisconsin is the education gap, which polls show appears to be widening. Four years after Trump won non-college-educated voters in Wisconsin by six points, crosstabs show him leading Harris among them by 10 points. But Biden won college-educated voters in Wisconsin by 16 points, and here in 2024, Harris currently wins those voters by 20 points. (About a third of Wisconsin residents over 25 have at least a bachelor's degree, while the remaining two-thirds have none. That's comparable to most other large swing states.)

And even if Wisconsin as a whole votes the same way in 2024 as it did in 2020, there could be some changes to the underlying electoral map. Polls also suggest that the electorate in rural Wisconsin shifted 5 points in favor of Democrats between 2020 and 2024 (although they are still heavily Republican). Meanwhile, they suggest that voters in the state's urban areas have shifted three percentage points toward Republicans (though they are still heavily Democratic).

But the biggest changes were in Wisconsin's suburbs. According to exit polls, Trump won suburban Wisconsin by 12 points in 2020; According to 2024 crosstabs, Harris is currently ahead of them by 9 points.

Keep an eye on Wisconsin's famous “WOW” counties – Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington – on election night to see if this happens. These suburban Milwaukee districts have historically been at the heart of Republican support in Wisconsin. In 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won by 35 points. But in 2020, Trump won it by just 23 points. If the WOW districts become competitive, it would be a big deal for Wisconsin politics.

The problems

Like the rest of the country, the economy is the most important issue for Wisconsin voters. According to an average of three recent surveys (by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO/The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times/Siena College and Marquette University Law School), 31 percent of Wisconsin residents cited the economy as their most important issue. According to the same pollsters, this was virtually identical to the share of voters nationally who prioritized the economy.

Immigration is another important issue in Wisconsin; An average of 17 percent named it as their most important issue, and it ranked second only to the economy in Wall Street Journal and Marquette polls. According to the Wall Street Journal poll, immigration is an even bigger problem in Wisconsin than nationally, but the other two pollsters found that the share of Wisconsin residents who prioritized immigration was essentially the same as nationally.

However, potentially good news for Democrats is that all three pollsters agree that abortion is a more important issue in Wisconsin than nationally. In the Badger State, an average of 18 percent chose abortion as their most important issue; Nationwide it was only 13 percent. This makes sense considering that the legal status of abortion in Wisconsin has been hotly contested since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Roe v. case that criminalized abortion. A limited number of clinics began performing abortions again in late 2023 after a local court limited the scope of that law.

The downballot races

Of course, the presidential race isn't the only competitive election in Wisconsin. Control of the U.S. Senate also falls to the state as Republican businessman Eric Hovde hopes to unseat Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. As of Oct. 17 at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, this race's poll average of 538 gave Baldwin a 4.2-point lead.

Fortunately for Republicans, the race has slowly tightened in recent weeks, and Hovde is still about two points behind Trump in the average poll, meaning he still has more room to rise. Crucially for Democrats, however, Baldwin is also 2 points ahead of Harris, putting Baldwin just over 50 percent on our average. That means she either has to lose support or the polls have to be wrong for her to lose. (Of course, both are very possible!)

Finally, true nerds should pay attention on election night to the elections for the Wisconsin Assembly – the lower house of the state legislature. The Assembly has been in Republican hands since 2011, due in large part to the distribution of district lines that gave Republicans a large advantage. Last year, however, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the state's legislative plans were unconstitutional and they were redesigned to be much more evenly divided between the parties. Therefore, there is a very real chance that Democrats will win a majority in the Assembly this year. (You'll likely have to wait until 2026 to have a chance of flipping the state Senate, since only half of the Senate districts are up for election that year.)

Footnotes

*Based on surveys of likely and registered voters only (if a survey included results from both populations, we used likely voters). If a poll included both a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump and a third-party version, we used the head-to-head version. Finally, if a polling organization (defined as a partnership between a pollster and a sponsor, or a pollster alone if its work was not sponsored by an outside group) conducted more than one survey during the relevant time period, only the most recent version was included. All polls conducted and published between September 17th and October 17th at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time are included.