The tallies were always close. And when turnout in cities like Madison and Milwaukee lags, urbanites can be swallowed by rural folks — and those latter voters have become more consolidated around the Republican flag in the last decade, says Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Obama’s success in the state, and Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, proved, “Yeah, we could be very blue, but you have to excite and engage the base,” Burden says.
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