The NPR Politics Podcast - Talking To The Wisconsinites Who Haven't Made Up Their Minds

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

The state is vital in both candidates' path clearing the 270 electoral vote threshold necessary to win the presidency. Wisconsin went once for Donald Trump and once for Joe Biden. How are voters in the state feeling this year?This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, national political correspondent Don Gonyea, and political reporter Elena Moore.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. I'm Ryan from Charlotte, North Carolina, and I am on the way to my college graduation ceremony. Thank you to the NPR Politics Podcast team for helping me get through all those long nights of studying over the last four years.

This podcast was recorded at 12.36 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will officially be a college graduate. Congratulations. Big deal. It's exciting. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover the presidential campaign.

And I'm Don Gagné, national political correspondent. Today, the state of Wisconsin. Elena, you have brought back some reporting from that state. So we'll start there. Why Wisconsin? And how did you decide where in Wisconsin you wanted to go? I mean, why Wisconsin? Because as we've talked about, it's one of just a handful of states that we will be obsessed with for the next several months until the election. It's a key swing state. And within this swing state, there are very swingy counties. There are these things called boomerang counties, which are not unique to Wisconsin. There's like a handful of them in crucial states, probably more like 20 or so in

the country. These are places, counties that voted twice for former President Barack Obama and then flipped to former President Trump in 2016. And then this last election boomeranged, bounced back to Biden, say that five times fast. And so they're called boomerang counties because they have correctly voted with the winning presidential candidate in the last few elections. So I was in Wisconsin, and there's a county outside of Madison, Wisconsin called Sauk County, and this is a boomerang county. But right next to it is Columbia County, which is called a pivot county. And the pivot counties are like cousins of the boomerang because they also voted for Obama twice, Obama, Obama, and then Trump in 2016, that big flip drama. But then in 2020,

they did not boomerang back. They stayed with Trump. The thing about Columbia is it barely stayed with Trump. So I was like, ooh, spicy. I need to go to these two neighboring counties because they both just barely voted for different candidates. And they kind of, you know, exemplify this split mentality, which is in a split state. And Dawn, how significant are these types of counties, whether it's Boomerang or Pivot or whatever you want to call it, these counties that tend to go back and forth? For the record, Boomerang sounds a lot more fun than Pivot, right? That's true. But I think from experience, the people who live in these

places do not particularly enjoy any of it, especially if they are an undecided kind of swingy voter in one of these places. But they matter because while there are 25 of them across the country, only a small handful of them are actually in states that are also what we like to call swing states or battleground states. Elena noted, we are focusing on so intently because it's pretty clear that these are the states where the election will be decided. But here's what happens in those states. In the counties that aren't pivots or aren't boomerangs, the local county officials work on driving turnout, even if it's a county that they expect to win easily. They hope to drive big turnout in their respective strongholds. That leaves it to these boomerang and pivot counties that are close. And the voters in the middle there who have not made up their mind can tip the balance.

And that has proven to make the difference in state after state, in presidential election after presidential election. Now, there are a couple of big factors when it comes to swingy places. One is turnout and the other is persuasion. And I think we talk less about persuasion because, frankly, fewer people are probably persuadable. Most of the time elections are about turnout, right? That's a cliche. But did you meet people who were either, you know, truly undecided or maybe had just gone back and forth? Actually, yes.

When I was in Portage, Wisconsin, which is part of Columbia County, that pivot county, I met Sharon Wade, who's a small business owner. She runs this antique furnishing craft store downtown. And she told me, you know, she often votes for what's best for her business. And in the past, that's meant voting twice for former President Donald Trump. Before that, she voted for former President Barack Obama. And she told me right now, I mean, business has been slower than usual over the last year. And so it's still top of mind. But what's motivating her this time to flip and vote for Biden is because of all of the legal drama that is surrounding Trump. I just feel like there's so much going on with his life that how can he focus on our country? So I think that's part of

it for me is just we need someone who's going to be dedicated to what's happening for us. So that's somebody who like literally could embody what happens in Columbia County, maybe not. But I think that there are people like that throughout this place and obviously in Saucon right next door. And Dawn, you know, I think all of us who spend time reporting on voters get a little excited when we do meet one of these admittedly relatively unusual voters who are truly swing voters, because we know most people tend to align with one party or the other, even if they're

independent. What is your sense of why people fall into this category when they do? I mean, what do you hear from voters who aren't really settled on one major party or the other? We do get excited when somebody says to us after we ask them who they're voting for, I don't know. I haven't made up my mind yet. So we immediately start running through the list of questions we have. What issues are most important to you? How do you typically vote? How did you vote last time? Why did you vote that way? What's different this time? You know, we go through all of these questions and I guess somewhere inside you hope they're going to give you a very concrete and

specific answer for how they're processing everything. And they don't. These people, as you talk to them, tend to just be dissatisfied with how things are. The person they voted for last time maybe isn't delivering like they anticipated. The cost of gasoline is too high. The cost of groceries is too high. They tend to be, you know, a little bit vague, except to say that they thought things would be better. They're not better. So now they're looking for a way to make them better. And if this person isn't working, maybe that person will work. Or maybe this person hasn't done all I want, but maybe I need to give them a little more time. But to hear that is important because there are people in every state and certainly in every one of these boomerang counties

who are thinking about things in exactly that way. And we know there's a lot of broad dissatisfaction among American voters across the board about the political system. Elena, before we take a quick break, what are some of the issues that you were hearing about in Wisconsin? I mean, they're the issues that you've probably heard in North Carolina and in Georgia and Arizona and Michigan. I had people bring up concerns about the economy rising prices. I heard about concerns about the border and immigration policy. People are concerned about protecting reproductive rights, especially if they are leaning more towards the Democratic side. I did hear, you know, this idea of if you are solid in your choice, there is a disdain for the other side. And that's not new or revolutionary.

But I heard the idea kind of hammered home that not only are you voting because of these policies, but you are voting against the other side. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll have more in just a second. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend or receive money internationally and always get the real time mid market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. And Elena, in addition to talking with voters who are trying to make up their minds this year,

you also talked to the people who are trying to persuade them one way or the other. Those are the organizers and the base voters trying to rally other people to their side. So let's start with the Democrats. What are they focusing on? Yeah, so I actually got the opportunity with NPR producer Jung Yoon Han, we got to do kind of two mini roundtables with local organizers on both sides. And so when I talked to the local Dems in Sauk County. It was very clear early on that the Democratic organizers know the challenges they have. One of the members there, Judy Brey, she goes out canvassing every week in her town. The border and immigration and cost of living over and over and over again. They say our president is doing nothing about it.

I'm not going to vote for him. And these organizers say they will be trying to address those issues. But at the same time, they're going to try to make this election about a few other things, too. They say it's about protecting democracy and, you know, safeguarding abortion rights. Yeah. And what about the Republicans? I think it's kind of in the same way. It's the offensive of what the Democrats are playing defense. They're going to hammer home that this election is a referendum on Biden in the same way Democrats did that four years ago about Trump. You know, they're going to talk about the border. They're

going to talk about rising prices on the economy. Gordon Stotts, who was a member of the Sauk County Republicans, he kind of put it best to me, you know, when thinking about how to address this election to some of these swing voters in his county. than Trump is for himself. He's laying the stage for here's what happens if you don't elect someone that has our country's real benefits in mind. That was a sentiment we heard talking with the other members in that group. It was actually kind of an amazing scene. The South County Republicans meet in this repurposed old bank in this 300-person town of Rock Springs, and their campaign headquarters is full of campaign posters. There's literally an old bank door still in that space. And so they're talking politics around this like pretty amazing, amazing space. So we heard from a Republican in Wisconsin who, you know,

obviously is unhappy with President Biden as a Trump supporter. At the same time, for Trump supporters who want to get out the vote, want to persuade their fellow voters to support their candidate, there are some challenges on the ground, particularly when you talk about the things coming from Trump and the Trump campaign. Don, what are some of those challenges? And so much of it focuses on 2020 and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that a lot of the quote unquote fraud that he refers to was rooted in early voting and mail-in voting. But when you get on the ground and start talking to these county chairs, they are desperately trying to figure out ways to get more Republican voters, again, these are the Republican county chairs, to get more Republican voters to mail in their votes early, to sign up for mail-in ballots. They know that that is what they need to do to drive turnout, especially in these boomerang counties. They are trying not to talk about it too much with people and trying to talk about it in a way that doesn't contradict a lot of these voters' own beliefs that mail-in balloting is the source of all fraud in elections.

So they have to kind of kind of elude those differences, but still get people to sign up because they need to get those votes in the bank so they can focus their efforts on swing voters or other voters who might need a little extra push to get them to turn out. You know, Elena, this is a unique election. These are two major party candidates who are both extremely well-known quantities. We talked a moment ago about sort of a boomerang voter who's gone back and forth between the parties. But did you meet people who are truly at this point still undecided? Yeah, and I don't even know if undecided is the right word as much as they just, this isn't what they're focused on. And when they're asked about it, they're like, why are you asking me about this? I met Marissa Flick, who is, you know, a mom to an under two-year-old son, and she told me she's a caretaker for her sister. And I asked her about politics, and, you know, she kind of just explained that she feels disconnected from it all. She's busy. She's caring for people. I don't really know what to look for.

I feel like every time you see like a video of someone, they're always just bashing the other side, not saying like, oh, what they're going to do to make the country better. And, you know, she actually voted for Biden. It was our first election four years ago. She voted for Biden and she admits it was partially because her mom told her to. Her mom is, you know, a Biden voter, a Democrat. And when I said, what do you think this year? She said, I'm not voting because I don't want 80 year old men running our country. She's not interested in the Biden Trump rematch. And I said, is the door closed? And she kind of just shrugged and said, you know, if someone gave me good enough reasons, maybe I would vote for Biden again. And I think that kind

of sums it up, right? Of like, if there's a motivator and bring someone to enter into the politics discussion when they're very busy and they have other things going on, that's what could push them there. And it's unclear what that could be for someone like Marissa or other undecided voters in really, really crucial states. And that's the thing. I mean, how do you reach a voter who doesn't want to be talked to about the election at this point? Her mother was the main influence on her in the last election. Maybe this time it'll be a friend. Maybe it'll be somebody she knows and trusts, or maybe not. But she is the exact voter that these party officials are going to be trying to find and trying to reach and trying to get a

message to. Particularly in a state like Wisconsin. Exactly. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover the presidential campaign. I'm Don Gagne. I cover national politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography.

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