Trump and Republican Threat to Democracy Is Grave and Growing

Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties lead voter
decrease in Wisconsin, 2016, (Charles Franklin)

The verdict explaining why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump is in: Many Democratic-leaning voters didn't vote (538.com), (Charles Franklin).

This explanation is not a tautology.

Republicans spent a lot of time and effort on blocking voters and it paid off, especially among those "urban" voters at whom Paul "I-cannot-and- will-not give-up-my-family-time" Ryan likes to cast aspersions in southeastern Wisconsin where most of the urban types live. Statewide, the 2016 vote is down 3 percent from 2012 (Charles Franklin).

Note the Wisconsin counties map at right and the deep-purple and light-purple counties at lower-right in the image. Those counties in southeastern Wisconsin are Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties, and the 2016 vote dropped off precipitously in this region.

Wouldn't it be a bad idea to work for more Democratic-leaning voters casting votes? But in Wisconsin, the Democratic Party does not employ the best and brightest.

This Friday night, Matt Rothschild, will be offering a talk in Oregon, Wisconsin, about the "risks Trump poses to our democracy."

Firefly Cafe in Oregon, Wisconsin
Friday, Jan 6, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

We should be listening to Rothschild. The 3-percent voter suppression in Wisconsin is coming to the nation as a whole.

Wisconsin Political Data and Analyses Lead Country

via mal contends - Wisconsin is ground zero, along with some seven other states, in the 2008 presidential election.

Small-time (by marketing standards) Milwaukee and Green Bay are two of nation's top four markets for presidential ads, and the state ranks sixth among the key battlegrounds in TV spending (Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

How do we know that? We know through the work of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which compiles statistical data on political spending in broadcast media around the country, including this latest report (for which I cannot find a link): Nearly 100 percent of the McCain campaign's recent advertisements are negative.

And the Wisconsin Advertising Project is not alone in its contributions to political knowledge.

Wisconsin is ground zero to among the nation's most insightful political data gathering and analyses, often cited by the national media and used as analytical resources in describing voting demographics, voting preferences, and various trends.

Other examples include Election08Data and Political Arithmetic.

But these are not secretive campaign strategists planning their appeals to the voters, these are public outfits and publicly minded academics and political junkies.

The value of Wisconsin's long commitment to public education and the Wisconsin Idea is clear.

It is no wonder that the grand-daddy of all polls--the Nielsen ratings--also has long ties to the University of Wisconsin System in Arthur Charles Neilson, Sr., BS, University of Wisconsin at Madison (1918).