PEWAUKEE, Wis. — President-elect Donald Trump wins Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, reclaiming the swing state for the Republican Party after losing it to President Biden in 2020 by just 0.4 percentage points.
Trump, 78, leads Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, by 4 percentage points, with 51.3% vs. 47.3% of the vote in Wisconsin, as of 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
That’s Trump’s biggest victory yet in the Dairy State, which he won in 2016 by less than a percentage point.
The former president rallied voters in Green Bay and Milwaukee in the week before the election as a closer for a campaign that focused here on the economy and immigration, promising better days ahead and tying Vice President Kamala Harris to Biden’s policies.
Trump waded into several Democratic cities — including, more than once, stronghold Milwaukee, which he lauded as “home of the first and oldest school choice” program.
Education is “the civil-rights issue of our age,” he declared as Republicans sought to make school choice an election issue in a number of states.
The ex-prez also held a rally in deep-blue Dane County in the final month in an attempt to close a traditionally large Democratic margin in the high-turnout county.
Running mate J.D. Vance and surrogates also worked the state in the weeks leading up to the election, urging supporters to vote early despite Trump previously railing against it.
Multiple GOP-aligned third-party groups worked the ground game to turn out the vote, including Turning Point Action and Americans for Prosperity WI.
The strategy paid off as the Republican base and a surge of independent voters in the final weeks helped push the former president across the finish line.
Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by 1 point before the state flipped blue for Biden in 2020 by 0.8 points — even after multiple recounts and the GOP’s legal challenges.
Both candidates campaigned heavily here, each visiting red and blue strongholds in an effort to pick up low-propensity and undecided voters to pad their margins in the pivotal swing state.
Polls put Wisconsin in a dead heat for the presidential hopefuls with the RealClearPolling average for the candidates headed into Election Day putting Trump at +0.2.
