These areas of Wisconsin are likely to flip parties under new electoral maps. Do you live in one of them?
Under Wisconsin's new legislative maps passed in February, as many as 21% of the state's adults could find themselves represented by a new political party in either the state Assembly or Senate this fall, based on historic election results.
According to an analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, more than 120,000 voting-age Wisconsinites in safe districts have been drawn into districts expected to prefer the opposite political party in the state Assembly in the next election.
The vast majority live in districts that historically preferred Republicans but have been drawn into districts where Democrats are favored to win, marking the beginning of a massive change to the state's political landscape after over a decade of Republican gerrymandering.
Changes to representation in the state Senate are less dramatic, but still, more than 70,000 adults currently represented by Republicans now live in districts that favor Democrats based on past election results.
Areas most likely to see a change in party representation in either the Assembly or Senate include the cities of Green Bay and Eau Claire, rural areas in south central Wisconsin, the southeast corner of the state from Milwaukee to Kenosha, and the Driftless Area.
The Journal Sentinel analysis compared historical party preferences under Wisconsin's previous legislative maps to the new boundaries. Voter preferences under the new maps are based on a composite of precinct-level election results in statewide general elections from 2016 through 2022.
Due to the way Democrats and Republicans are clustered or spread around different parts of the state, the total number of votes for each party does not always translate into a proportional number of seats in the state Legislature.
However, the new maps put legislative majorities within reach for Democrats for the first time in over a decade.
Some parts of the state that were once solidly Republican or Democrat will also see competitive elections for the first time in over a decade.
Competitive races are those where the expected partisan lean of a district is within five percentage points in either direction.
More than 420,000 voting-age Wisconsinites currently represented by Republicans in the state Assembly have been drawn into districts that could be competitive or favor a Democratic candidate instead.
More: See Wisconsin's new state legislative maps signed by Gov. Tony Evers
That number is larger in the state Senate. Almost half a million adults in Republican districts have been drawn into districts that historically favored Democrats or will see a competitive election in 2024 or 2026. (Some state senators are up for election this fall, while others will hold their seats until the 2026 general elections.)
That is roughly 10% of the state's voting-age population.
Marquette University Lubar Center research fellow John Johnson drew parallels to the Michigan redistricting process, which recently gave Democrats in that state control of the legislature. He added that a realignment as significant as this hasn't been seen in Wisconsin since the 1980s.
Johnson said that while these maps create more competitive districts than previous maps, competition was not a priority in the court's criteria.
"While this [new legislative] map does increase the number of competitive seats... it doesn't do so, in my opinion, dramatically," Johnson said. "They drew a lot of safe Democratic seats."
Andrew Hahn is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's newsroom developer. He can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: See if your Wisconsin legislative district will flip parties under new maps