Milwaukee: packing the blue city
Wisconsin is one of the most evenly split states in the country, decided by a point or two in most statewide races.
But its Democratic voters are packed into two cities, Milwaukee and Madison, while Republicans are spread across the suburbs and countryside. That geography makes the state unusually easy to gerrymander: pack the cities tight and you can win most of the districts with a minority of the votes.
This board is the Milwaukee metro, the city plus the 'WOW' suburbs of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington. The city votes better than two-to-one Democratic; the WOW counties vote roughly 60 percent Republican. Overall the region is about 54 percent Democratic in two-party terms, yet the way the lines are drawn decides who actually wins.
It is not hypothetical. Wisconsin's 2011 Republican-drawn maps were among the most skewed in the nation: in 2018 Democrats won a majority of the statewide assembly vote but only about a third of the seats. The maps reached the Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford, which sidestepped the question on a technicality, and new maps were only drawn in 2024 after the state Supreme Court threw the old ones out. You are playing the Republican side: pack the city, and see if you can win a majority of districts from a minority of the vote.
Clinton 46.5%, Trump 47.2%. Wisconsin's 2016 presidential vote. The grey sliver is other candidates.
The metro's nine state senate districts (2011 map, 2016 vote). Democrats sit packed in the small lakefront districts; the grey slivers are neighbouring districts from outside the metro.