Four years after Republican President Donald Trump turned Wisconsin red for the first time since 1984 by a razor-thin margin, unofficial results show Wisconsin voters, by a nearly identical margin, have backed Democrat Joe Biden.
Wisconsin has lived up to expectations it would have outsized influence in the presidential election, however, the ultimate result of this turbulent election is now up to other key swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.
With more than 99% of precincts reporting and nearly all absentee ballots accounted for, Biden has notched a 49.57% lead over Trump, who got 48.94%. According to the Associated Press, 95% of the expected vote is in.
The number of voters in this election, about 3.3 million, set an all-time record for the state, while the turnout as a percentage of the estimated voting age population was about 72.5%, just shy of the all-time record of 73.2% turnout in 2004.
Either way, turnout is substantially higher than in 2016, when about 3 million, or 67% of voting age Wisconsinites cast a ballot.
As of around 6 a.m., Biden was winning the state with fewer than 21,000 votes, a figure hauntingly similar to Trump’s roughly 22,000 vote margin of victory in 2016, but in reverse.
Both candidates received higher percentage support than Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton did in 2016, however, Biden’s improved performance in Dane and Milwaukee Counties helped put him over the threshold in Wisconsin.
For most of Tuesday evening, Trump retained a consistent lead in early returns, but that lead evaporated when the totals from Democratic leaning absentee ballots were accounted for in the state’s urban centers of Milwaukee and Green Bay.
With Republican President Donald Trump leading Wisconsin in early returns for most of the night, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is now managing a thin but likely insurmountable lead in the state after Milwaukee, Brown and Kenosha counties delivered results from thousands of absentee ballots in the early morning hours on Wednesday.
Kenosha County delivered its final unofficial vote totals as dawn was breaking shortly after 6 a.m.
Still, election officials caution election night results are unofficial, and need to be certified by municipal, county and state officials before they can become valid. Trump is also likely to be able to request a recount in the state.
State law dictates that the runner-up in a presidential election can request a recount if the state’s margin is within one percentage point of the winner’s total vote. There is no cost to the losing candidate if the difference between the leading candidate is 0.25% or less.
With most unofficial tallies compiled in counties across the state, an analysis of the totals shows both Trump and Biden logging greater percentages of the vote than in 2016, signifying a decline in support for third party candidates.
The results, however, also show weakening support for Trump in the strongly conservative Milwaukee suburbs that helped bring him over the edge in 2016. In Waukesha County, for example, Trump garnered 59.75% of the vote this year, compared to 60% in 2016.
Biden managed to improve upon 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's margins there. He got 39% of the vote compared to Clinton's 33%.
The vote totals in Ozaukee County, another conservative stronghold outside Milwaukee, tell a similar story. Trump's support there dropped by about a half a percentage point, while Biden's improved 6% over Clinton.
As some expected, the Democratic stronghold of Dane County managed to hand Biden greater margins (a five percentage point increase) — and a greater raw vote total — than it did for Clinton. Biden ended up getting 260,157 votes in the county, compared to 217,697 for Clinton.
