One week ago, ABC News and the Washington Post released a poll that got some attention for predicting that Joe Biden would win the battleground state of Wisconsin by a margin of 17 percentage points.

The same week, a New York Times/Siena College poll had Biden up by 11 percentage points over Trump. CNN’s poll on Monday had Biden ahead by 10 points.

Just like in 2016, they were all way off.

“The idea that there would be a 17-point Biden lead in a state like Wisconsin in an election that is as polarizing as this one was absurd,” said Republican strategist Brian Reisinger, a veteran of statewide campaigns.

Reisinger went a step farther and declared Wisconsin the “most evenly divided state in the country.”

That argument was borne out Wednesday afternoon when the Associated Press called the state for Biden, who held a lead of just over 20,000 votes. That margin is less than one percentage point, well below even the relatively conservative five-point difference predicted last week by the Marquette University Law School poll. President Donald Trump’s campaign immediately threatened to demand a recount as a handful of other key states remained too close to call.

In Wisconsin, Biden edged past the president by leveraging high turnout in Dane and Milwaukee Counties. Though Trump performed well beyond those areas, it was not enough.

Wisconsin upheld its reputation as an active, divided, battleground state with a record voter turnout of about 3.3 million — the most ever in the state —  which is at least 72% of the voting age population, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Biden’s success was due to motivating more voters in the state’s two largest urban areas — Dane and Milwaukee counties — than Hillary Clinton did four years ago. He also improved on her numbers in three Republican-heavy counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — surrounding Milwaukee, according to unofficial returns.

Meanwhile, Trump fared better than he did in 2016 in the rural parts of the state, which buoyed him. With the record voter turnout, Trump got more votes than any other Republican candidate in the state’s history and strategists say he propelled several down-ballot Republicans to victory.

“The under-told story is in how good in raw numbers Trump did statewide as far as vote totals,” said Matt Batzel, Wisconsin-based executive director for American Majority Action, a conservative advocacy group that canvassed for Trump. 

Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by running up the vote total in rural Wisconsin and activating largely non-college-educated white voters. That year, he also benefited from depressed Democratic turnout in urban areas.

This year, Democratic turnout in Wisconsin’s urban centers surpassed that of four years ago.

Each campaign took a different approach to reaching Wisconsin voters. The Democrats spent a record amount on digital, TV and print advertising and bringing in celebrities for virtual events and concerts. But they gave up on establishing field offices throughout the state and did not canvas in-person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Republicans also spent significantly, but not as much as the Democrats, opting to focus on a traditional ground game, with field offices and canvassers knocking on doors in person. Republican strategists say their in-person approach helped them, while Democrats say that Biden’s win shows their method was effective.

“Biden won Wisconsin, so I think it’s hard to criticize a winning strategy,” said Democratic consultant Sachin Chheda.

RETHINKING POLLING 
When it comes to polling, both Republican and Democratic strategists agree: it’s a problem. 
“We’re going to have to do something so that the industry confronts another major national election in a row in which their data was not accurate enough to be totally useful,” Chheda said.

Republican strategist Bill McCoshen called the polling “atrocious” and other Republicans, including Trump’s campaign, maintain that they are increasingly modeled to shape public opinion rather than reflect it.

“Trump’s internal polls had him down 1 (percentage point) … turns out Trump’s internals were spot on,” McCoshen said. “He ended up losing Wisconsin by 0.6 percent. Only one pollster came close to that, the Trafalgar Group. The Trafalgar group had Biden ahead by 1 percentage point.”

The firm was recently profiled in a New York Times piece, which wrote it was “considered far too shadowy by other pollsters to be taken seriously.” As for those other pollsters: “when you’re so far outside the margin of error, you’re either incompetent or you had a result in mind,” McCoshen said.

Here are breakdowns of what happened in some of the state’s key voting regions. As in past years, the state’s rural/urban divide mostly fueled the chasm between Democrats and Republicans and this year the difference was even more pronounced.

“Democrats performed exceptionally well in Dane and Milwaukee counties and built a 364,263 margin just from those two counties,” McCoshen said. “Trump, on the other hand, in the other 70 counties, built a 343,747 vote margin, so that’s where the delta comes from.” 

DANE COUNTY
Dane County is always a Democratic stronghold, but record turnout this year played a defining role in getting Biden across the finish line with nearly 85% of eligible voters casting 162,068 total ballots, a 13% increase from 2016. Turnout surpassed that of both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012.

Biden scored 260,157 votes to Trump’s 78,789 with all county precincts reporting. Of the county’s total votes cast, 62.4 percent were by absentee ballot.

“Biden’s win was built on continuing to grow the base in Dane County where we see population growth, and so we see more people and more voters and a higher margin for Democrats,” Chheda said.

Some of the more suburban and rural areas surrounding Dane County also flipped to Biden and helped secure his win, said Melissa Baldauff, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Gov. Tony Evers.

“If you look at some of the areas surrounding Dane County compared to 2016, Sauk County and some of those areas got a little bit bluer,” she said. It shows Dane County has had a ripple effect in the area that continues to extend further out, she said. 
In order to win in Wisconsin, Democrats need to win big in Dane County and Biden accomplished that.

For Republicans, neutralizing Dane’s growth and increasingly high turnout will continue to be a hurdle.  

“The big challenge for any Republican is offsetting Dane County (and) its growing demographics,” American Majority Action’s Batzel said. 
But while Dane remains critical for Democrats to win statewide, this year’s legislative races showed there “is no path for them to take (state) legislative majorities unless they can figure out how to do better in rural Wisconsin,” McCoshen said.