MILWAUKEE — A long Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning spent waiting for results in the wake of an election was nothing new in Wisconsin this week, as a series of tight races came down to the wire yet again.
“The bottom line is — as people around the country probably know by now who are paying attention to politics — Wisconsin is a quintessential tipping-point 50/50 state,” Craig Gilbert, the former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief who’s now the Lubar Fellow at Marquette Law School, said Wednesday. “To have two incumbents on the ballot at the same time for major office and both have such competitive races... tells you exactly that — that this state is entrenched in its 50/50 divisions...”
Especially after Tuesday, Gilbert said the Badger State’s reputation as one of the country’s most purple battleground states remains strongly intact.
“[Republicans] had an opportunity to kind of take unified, full control of Wisconsin government with their very firm grip on the legislature,” Gilbert added. “Now, instead, they’re faced with another four years of divided government and a Democratic governor who is going to veto a lot of things that the Republican legislature is going to try and pass.”
Watch the full interview above.