This Wisconsin county has backed the winning presidential candidate for the last 6 elections
For all the polarization in American politics, everyone can agree that seven states hold the key to next month's election. These swing states contain a total of 513 counties, and among them only one has voted for the winning candidate in every presidential election this century. Door County, Wisconsin, offers a distinct shade of purple. Unencumbered by tribal loyalties, the citizenry has whipsawed from George W. Bush twice to Barack Obama twice; to Donald Trump and then to Joe Biden... consider Door a window into this critical election. Feverishly, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have been campaigning in swing states, especially Wisconsin. But neither has visited America's swingiest county. So, we decided to.
The Wisconsin tourism board could do worse than to anchor its next marketing campaign in Door County, the peninsula wedged between Lake Michigan and Green Bay– the water not the home of the Packers…. nicknamed "the Cape Cod of the Midwest," Door County and its coastline come embroidered with limestone cliffs, trees that blaze to life in the fall and enduring traditions like the fish boil.
The population: 30,000….and no one knows more of the locals than 84-year-old Niles Weborg, long-time fire chief…
Jon Wertheim:: Tell me about Door County…
Niles Weborg: How far do you want to go back? My relatives landed here, in 1851, from Norway…
Weborg has a handy way of placing Door County on Wisconsin's map…
Niles Weborg: And, uh, this is where we're at. Door County is up the thumb of Wisconsin. And Nor, Green Bay is down here. Milwaukee is down here. And we're right about here on the Peninsula.
Jon Wertheim: So we got, we got a bay side. And we got a Lake Michigan side.
Niles Weborg: There you go.
Jon Wertheim: Tell me, politically, what are people like.
Niles Weborg: Well, politically, we were strictly Republicans.
But then the transplants came and now Door County is the ultimate political weathervane…. in 2020, Joe Biden carried Door County by 292 votes…the tightest margin in any Wisconsin county.
Joel Kitchens: And it's not just the presidential elections. It's virtually every state-wide election, we seem to pick the winner. It's, it's kind of weird.
Republican Joel Kitchens represents Door County in the State Assembly.
Jon Wertheim: What do you attribute that to?
Joel Kitchens: I think a lot of it is that we are such a cross section of the state that we have a lot of people that came from the cities and from the suburbs and retired. We have a strong agricultural community. We have heavy manufacturing, and as you can see when you drive along the lake shore and the bay shore, there's a lotta money here. But there are also a lot of people that are really struggling as well.
On our road trip through Door County last week, we saw this first hand. The county is 92% White, but politically diverse. In the rural south: abundant signs for Donald Trump and towering silos….
25-year-old Austin Vandertie is a sixth-generation dairy farmer.
Jon Wertheim: When you go into that voting booth, first Tuesday in November, what is the one issue that's most going to impact how you vote?
Austin Vandertie: Inflation. You know, inflation affects the cost of my feed, my fuel, my seed, my fertilizer, everything that it takes for me to grow a crop and feed it to my cows to get a good product.
Like many of his neighbors, Vandertie is voting for Trump. But as we headed north, cows and deer blinds gave way to artists and rainbow flags...
Near the top of the thumb in Door County, in the tourist town of Sister Bay—where red gives ground to blue—we met Emma Cox, who runs Kindgoods, a new-age boutique.
Jon Wertheim: For this election, what is gonna be the issue that you're most concerned about?
Emma Cox: I think the issue that has been driving the-- work of activism that I've been doing for the last two years has been reproductive rights.
Charming as her little pocket of America might be, she understands: Door County may be the leading indicator in this most contentious election.
Emma Cox: Well, it feels like all eyes are on us. All eyes are on Wisconsin, all eyes have been on Door County. And it feels like there's pressure for us to deliver. (laugh)
Inasmuch as you can have a bellwether town within a bellwether county, Sturgeon Bay is Door's gravitational and political center. Shipbuilding is the big industry here. Sensibilities vary from one yard to the next…
Even the animals get into the act
Jon Wertheim: Tell me who we have here?
John Vincent: This is Ziva. She's our dog for democracy.
We met Ziva, as well as her owners, John and Annette Vincent, who organized a pop-up rally, flanking both sides of the main drag in Sturgeon Bay, drumming up support for the Democratic ticket…. and this is where shabby stereotypes come to die….
Jon Wertheim: I saw a truck with a gun rack honk and I saw a Prius--
John Vincent: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: --go by and give you a thumbs down--
John Vincent: Isn't that interesting--
Annette Vincent: Isn't that interesting–
John Vincent: It's more than just coincidental. We're s-- we're so (truck honking) on the edge that we're--
Annette Vincent: I mean, here comes a truck.
John Vincent: Whoa--
Jon Wertheim: On cue.
Annette Vincent: We-- we have--
John Vincent: We're purple.
Jon Wertheim: On cue--
John Vincent: We're purple--
Annette Vincent: We-- we are very purple. That is our impression from moving up here, is that we are very, very purple.
Now retired, they relocated from Chicago. They come three days a week not just to rally, but to gauge the political winds swirling off the bay….
Jon Wertheim: What's a positive response look like?
John Vincent: Well, positive response can be anything from just a nod of the head to an enthusiastic wave, a horn honk-- a solid horn honk-- thumbs up
Jon Wertheim: You have data on raised thumbs versus raised middle fingers?
John Vincent: Well, that happens, too--
Annette Vincent: Oh, we get those too.
John Vincent: But I would say on-- keep-- you know, I have a pretty good sample size, and we run well over 80% positive to the negative.
For a more scientific assessment of the entire state of Wisconsin, we turned to the director of the Marquette Law School poll, Charles Franklin. His poll, widely considered Wisconsin's best, currently has Kamala Harris up four—but, not so fast….
Jon Wertheim: What is it like being a pollster these days?
Charles Franklin: It's challenging, because we've seen polling errors in 2016 and 2020. And those were major issues.
Memorably, in 2016 and 2020, most polls—CBS included— fell short when accounting for the Trump vote.
Jon Wertheim: There's something specific, particular to Trump that makes his support hard to capture.
Charles Franklin: In these four most recent elections, the two big errors have both come when Trump's on the ballot. And the two elections without him on the ballot, we've been as good or better than our long term average.
Jon Wertheim: Say more about why you think that is.
Charles Franklin: The people that Trump mobilizes to vote really do turn out for him. But they seem to drop out of the electorate in the midterm.
Brian Schimming: My suspicion is it keeps the Kamala Harris campaign up all night long.
Jon Wertheim: That there's this cohort that hasn't been capturable.
Brian Schimming: Correct.
Brian Schimming, Wisconsin's Republican Party chair, is shaking the trees to identify those hidden Trump voters… and, crucially, get them to the polls.
Jon Wertheim: How many potential Trump supporters are there in Wisconsin who have never voted before?
Brian Schimming: Well, I spoke at President Trump's rally the other day, and I said to the folks there, "Look, there are hundreds of thousands of people in this state who think like us, they act like us, they live like us, they believe like us, but they don't vote." And I truly believe that.
Jon Wertheim: Is it risky to rely on this sector, these low-propensity voters who have been so unreliable in the past?
Brian Schimming: It's risky not to.
For the Democrats the strategy entails running up the numbers in Milwaukee…. and booming Dane County - home to Madison, the state capitol and the University of Wisconsin - where Biden won more than 75% of the vote in 2020…. meanwhile, they'll try to stanch the bleeding in rural swaths that have swung heavily towards Trump….
Ben Wikler - state Democratic Party chair - thinks it's a complete jump ball right now for Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes.
Ben Wikler: So on Election Night, expect to stay up very late. And when you find out who won Wisconsin, which might happen at 4:00 in the morning, you probably know who won the presidential election.
Jon Wertheim: It's that pivotal?
Ben Wikler: Wisconsin was the state that tipped the Electoral College for Donald Trump in 2016. There is every possibility that Wisconsin could tip the presidential election again in 2024.
Wisconsin was decided by less than 1% in the last two elections. But get this: around 80% of the state's counties were decided by a double digit margin… which only magnifies Door County's uncanny distinction.
Ben Wikler: I think in Door County this election's almost perfectly tied as well. I was just looking at the county-by-county data before I joined you today. Whoever wins Door County on Election Day probably wins the state of Wisconsin yet again.
Jon Wertheim: You say whoever wins Door County likely wins Wisconsin. You also just said whoever wins Wisconsin likely wins the national election.
Ben Wikler: Yes--
Jon Wertheim: Not an exaggeration.
Ben Wikler: But--
Jon Wertheim: Door County, Wisconsin--
Ben Wikler: --historically the case. Whoever wins in Door County is probably the next president of the United States.
It got us thinking, is there one person in Door County who's actually picked the winning candidate in each of the last six presidential elections?.....The county did collectively; but did any single voter? If so, finding this mystery figure might provide a heck of a clue into how this presidential election will go…. So we went on a search….
We started with an APB at the local radio station…
TIM KOWOLS: If you or someone you know in Door County has voted for the presidential winner of every election going back to the year 2000, please reach out to 920…
But no response…. from the airwaves to the rooftops, Al Johnson's swedish restaurant is best known for the goats that graze on the grass roof…
Inside, we found the locals who beat the sunrise and the tourists, let themselves in through the back door and pour their own coffee…
Jon Wertheim: Do you know anyone that's voted for presidents six straight years now and gotten it right?
Male Voice (unidentified): No. No--
Female Voice (unidentified): No. (laughter)
We were told to go to another table and ask the guy in the hat…
Jon Wertheim: We got a hot tip it was…
Male Voice (unidentified): No, I had some of them. George H. W. was-- was my vote. But-- not his son.
Next stop in our pursuit, the local watering hole.
Jon Wertheim: Do you know that person?
Female Voice: I'm out.
Female Voice: I did not.
Female Voice: You have your work cut out for you. (laughter)
Then suddenly: a promising lead…
Female Voice: I hear you found your voter. (laughter)
Jon Wertheim: Seriously?
Female Voice: Right over there. He's down there--
Jon Wertheim: Seriously?
There at the end of the bar…sitting before something called a Badger Melt and a tall glass of milk—trucker, Joe Conlon.
Jon Wertheim: Bush, Bush, Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden.
Joe Conlon: I came close. Five out of six.
Jon Wertheim: Five out of six?
Joe Conlon: Yeah. Yeah, I didn't vote for Biden.
Jon Wertheim: Can I ask you how you're–gonna be votin' this year?
Joe Conlon:: I think I'm gonna be voting for Trump again.
Jon Wertheim: Three times in a row?
Joe Conlon:: Yes.
We had come agonizingly close…
Our last stop: the Rotary Club of Sturgeon Bay.
Jon Wertheim: I'm curious: does anyone know someone, a voter, who actually voted for the winning candidate all six years? Anyone?
Female Voice: I think I did. (laughter) Now that you ask the question, yes, I think I did.
Behold! our Door County unicorn….
Female Voice: No, no, now-- no, I didn't, now that I'm thinking about it. (laughter)
Jon Wertheim: We thought you had all six?
Female Voice: I thought I did. But, no, now I'm thinking back, I didn't.
After scouring Door County, we came up empty… which shows the improbability of it all…
But in our quest, maybe we stumbled across something even more rare, we found a place in America where family and community outrank party loyalty. In this divisive election season, we came to America's ultimate battleground….except there was no battle … as they say here with pride, we live above the tension line.
Jon Wertheim: What's your sense of how the tone in Door County compares to the tone nationally?
Emma Cox: You don't wanna alienate your neighbors. You don't wanna alienate your fellow business owners. You all come together.
Jon Wertheim: Do you have family members that are gonna vote differently from you?
Austin Vandertie: Oh, absolutely.
Jon Wertheim: Everyone invited to Thanksgiving, regardless?
Austin Vandertie: Absolutely. Politics is, you know, if we can't talk about it that means it's gone way too far in the wrong direction.
Jon Wertheim: You recognize that's not necessarily the, the vibe in the country at large?
Austin Vandertie: Hey. We're a little different in Wisconsin, I guess. We got that Midwest nice going on.
In keeping with the undulations of Highway 42, in Door County, Wisconsin, you swing back and forth and continue on down the road.
Produced by Draggan Mihailovich. Associate producer, Emily Cameron. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Peter M. Berman.