What Wisconsin voters are focused on in a swing county that's backed the presidential winner for years
Ahead of the Nov. 5 election, Wisconsin resident Emma Cox feels like all eyes are on her home county — where voters in past years backed Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and then Joe Biden.
Door County, home to around 30,000 people, has a streak of backing the winning candidate in every presidential election for decades. One of a handful of competitive counties in the state, Door County could offer a clue into the eventual outcome as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump vie for Wisconsin's crucial 10 electoral votes.
"All eyes are on Wisconsin, all eyes have been on Door County," Cox said. "And it feels like there's pressure for us to deliver."
What makes Door County, Wisconsin, unique
Seven swing states, home to 513 counties, hold the key to next month's election. Door County, located on a peninsula wedged between Lake Michigan and Green Bay, is the only one of those counties where voters have selected the winning candidate in each election this century.
In 2020, President Biden carried the county by just 292 votes, the tightest margin in any Wisconsin county. Yet even as the Trump and Harris campaigns crisscross the state, neither candidate has made a stop in Door County.
Republican Joel Kitchens, who represents the county in the State Assembly, said Door tends to pick the winner in every statewide election.
"I think a lot of it is that we are such a cross section of the state," he said. "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."
The county is 92% White, but diverse politically. In the rural south, signs of support for Trump dominate the landscape.
What voters in Door County are focused on
Cox, who runs a boutique in the Door County tourist town of Sister Bay, is focused on reproductive rights and their role in the election. Despite political differences, she said people in the county get along.
"You don't want to alienate your neighbors," Cox said. "You don't want to alienate your fellow business owners. You all come together."
Further south in the county, Austin Vandertie, a sixth-generation dairy farmer, is focused on 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," Vandertie said.
The 25-year-old south Door County resident plans to vote for Trump, with many of his neighbors leaning the same way.
Further north in the county, cows and deer blinds give way to artists and rainbow flags.
In Sturgeon Bay, the county seat, sensibilities vary from one yard to the next with signs for both Trump and Harris.
John and Annette Vincent, now retired, moved to Sturgeon Bay from Chicago.
"We are very purple," Annette said. "That is our impression from moving up here, is that we are very, very purple."
How the poll and party workers see Door County
Wisconsin was decided by less than 1% in the last two elections, even though around 80% of the state's counties were decided by a double-digit margin.
Charles Franklin is the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, widely considered Wisconsin's best. His most recent poll has Harris up 4%, but he acknowledges that there were major issues with polling in 2016 and 2020.
Most polls in those years, including ones by CBS News, fell short in accounting for Trump's voters. The Marquette Law School's polling during the midterm elections closely mirrored the final results but had greater discrepancies during the presidential elections.
"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," Franklin said.
Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming is working to identify those hidden Trump voters, determined to get them to the polls on Nov. 5.
"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," Schimming said.
For the Democrats, the strategy entails running up the numbers in Milwaukee and Dane County, home to Madison — the state capitol and the University of Wisconsin. Biden won more than 75% of the vote there in 2020. Democrats are also trying to stanch the bleeding in rural swaths that have swung heavily towards Trump.
The state's vote is pivotal, State Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said.
"Wisconsin was the state that tipped the Electoral College for Donald Trump in 2016," Wikler said. "There is every possibility that Wisconsin could tip the presidential election again in 2024."
Wikler took a look at Door County data and found that the race was almost perfectly tied there.
"Whoever wins in Door County is probably the next president of the United States," he said.
The search for the mystery swing voter
While the county has swung back and forth between voting for Democrats and Republicans, 60 Minutes wanted to find out if there was anyone in the county who'd followed the same path, voting for the winning candidate for six elections in a row.
The search began with a bulletin broadcast by the local radio station. It continued at a restaurant, famous for goats that graze the grass roof, where correspondent Jon Wertheim asked patrons if they knew anyone who'd voted for the winning candidate six elections in a row, but he was out of luck.
Next stop was the local watering hole, where Wertheim found trucker Joe Conlon.
He came close, voting for five of the last six winners. Conlon, who thinks he'll be voting for Trump this year, also voted for him in the last two elections.
At a local Rotary Club, a woman thought she might have voted for the winning candidate in all six elections, before realizing she hadn't.
After scouring Door County, 60 Minutes came up empty in its search for that singular voter. Still, one thing was made clear during the search: in the swingiest part of Wisconsin, family and community come before politics, and everyone will be invited to Thanksgiving, regardless of their political affiliations.
"We're a little different in Wisconsin, I guess. We got that Midwest nice going on," Vandertie said.
