WASHINGTON — The party conventions are over but the focus on Wisconsin is not. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ nominee for president, made Wisconsin a focus this week when she held a rally in Milwaukee, despite her party’s convention being in Chicago.
Experts said to expect to see Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in Wisconsin a lot before Election Day.
“I think Governor Walz is going to be campaigning in Wisconsin so much over the next two months that he'll qualify to vote here,” Mordecai Lee, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said.
That also goes for the Republican nominee for president, former President Donald Trump, and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
“You'll be seeing a lot of me over the next few months,” Vance said at his event in Wisconsin this week.
Wisconsin is one of the small number of swing states that will decide the election.
“We are the battleground state, and we will likely determine who occupies the White House and which party controls the Senate,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said at Thursday's delegation breakfast.
Baldwin faces a tough reelection against Republican businessman Eric Hovde.
Kathleen Dolan, a distinguished professor at UW-Milwaukee, said getting Wisconsin voters to the polls in November is now the priority for both parties.
“Elections in the United States these days are really not about trying to capture those undecided voters, because undecided voters at this point are actually the people who will be less likely to turn out. So it really is about creating enthusiasm and connection and turnout among the base,” Dolan said.
Hitting the pavement the old fashioned way is what Lee said the campaigns could do over the next two months to motivate voters.
“This is maintaining lists,” he explained. “This is maintaining cars to drive people to the polls. This is keeping in touch with people, [and asking] 'Have you cast your absentee ballot yet? Can I help you get your absentee ballot?'”
Trump carried Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in 2016 and then lost it to President Joe Biden by a similar margin four years later. Polls have shown a close race again in Wisconsin in November, but things can always change before Election Day.
“Polls are only about the day they were taken,” Dolan said.