For the first time in decades, the Wisconsin state legislature and the governor have come to a bipartisan agreement on the state’s voting maps. Here’s what you need to know.
Big Changes Afoot
With the exception of the districts in the city of Milwaukee, this is an entirely new map. That means you’re probably in a new voting district or the incumbent who represented you is no longer in that district, John Johnson, a research fellow in the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education at Marquette Law School, explained on City Cast Madison.
The maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and approved by the Republican-controlled legislature. The maps were drawn in a way that gives Democrats the opportunity to win a majority in the state assembly, which is something they haven’t managed to do in more than a decade.
“It's an enormous change from the past few cycles,” Johnson said.
Republicans are likely to lose their supermajority in the state Senate after the election this fall, but the real battle for control of that branch will happen in 2026, when the remaining half of seats are up for a vote.
Changes in Madison
Democrats are expected to pick up a big number of assembly seats in the Madison area. Under the previous maps, there were 11 Democratic-leaning districts in the greater Madison area, Johnson said. Now, Democrats have the opportunity to pick up 16 districts in the south central part of the state.
This change is the result of the new map’s districts pairing parts of urban areas with more rural areas, giving Democrats smaller, but still reliable advantages.
So, Are These Maps Gerrymandered?
According to Johnson, the term “gerrymander” has come to mean different things to different groups.
The way he sees it, Democrats drew these maps with partisanship on the mind.
“If you drew a map without using partisanship, without thinking about it at all, just using neutral criteria of compactness and keeping municipalities and counties intact, you would end up drawing a map that benefits Republicans quite considerably,” he explained. That’s because there are large numbers of Democratic voters clustered in cities, more than what’s needed for Democrats to win those districts.
But the use of partisanship was no accident, and in fact was encouraged by the state’s high court. When the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the old voting maps, it urged parties to consider their partisan impact in hopes of achieving “majoritarian concordance,” which according to Johnson, is the idea that whatever party receives the most votes, should also have a majority of legislative seats.
What About Congressional Maps?
Wisconsin’s congressional maps will stay the same. The state’s Supreme Court rejected a request to reconsider Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts.
