Former President Donald Trump has defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin, NBC News projects, denying Democrats a vital segment of their “blue wall” of Northern states to claim victory in the presidential race.
Trump flipped the critical battleground state, which he also managed to do in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, after he narrowly lost it to Joe Biden four years ago.
Polling in the lead-up to Election Day had showed Harris and Trump locked in a tight race within the margin of error in Wisconsin, similar to other battleground states. But Trump won several of those key states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, narrowing Harris’ paths to victory as election night wore on.
Harris and Trump campaigned feverishly for months in Wisconsin, regularly crisscrossing the state and advertising heavily. They sometimes held rallies near traditional strongholds for the opposing party in an effort to narrow the margins in what was long expected to be a close election.
That included Trump’s campaigning last month in the deep-blue population centers of Dane County and the city of Milwaukee. Trump’s team had hoped to cut into Democratic margins there, particularly among young and Black voters, and supplement his support in rural areas.
Meanwhile, Harris held a rally last month in Ripon, commonly recognized as the birthplace of the Republican Party, as she sought to make inroads with conservative-leaning voters who were skeptical of Trump. She was joined by former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., whose father was Republican President George W. Bush’s vice president.
Trump's two Wisconsin wins are the only ones for Republicans at the presidential level since 1984. Except for Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012, most presidential races in Wisconsin have historically been decided by less than 1 percentage point.
