As Dan O’Donnell writes, a new study from the Institute for Reforming Government shows how the Wisconsin GOP can convince Trump voters who skipped the last governor’s race to vote in huge numbers in 2026.
Wisconsin Republicans have a golden opportunity to win this year’s gubernatorial election and about 140,000 very good reasons to seize it right now.
A new report from the Institute for Reforming Government finds that more than 140,000 voters who turned out for President Trump in 2024 sat out the 2022 governor’s race. They weren’t apathetic. They weren’t anti-Republican. They simply didn’t see how state government in Madison touches their wallets the same way Washington does.
Interviews with these Trump voters revealed that they are hyper-focused on cost-of-living issues (inflation, housing, taxes) yet connect them almost exclusively to federal policy. As a result, state policy and, by extension, state politics to them feels distant and abstract.
That disconnect is killing the GOP in off-year elections and helps explain why conservatives haven’t won a Wisconsin Supreme Court race in seven years. But the IRG report also delivered the solution: When these voters were shown concrete examples of how Madison decisions hammer their daily lives, their interest spiked immediately. One suburban independent put it plainly: “Show me exactly how a candidate’s policies hit my paycheck and my bills, and I’m voting.”
Here’s where the Republican Party of Wisconsin and presumed GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany must move…and move very quickly. Property taxes are exploding, and Gov. Tony Evers is to blame. In 2023, Evers used his veto pen to strike numbers from the state budget to extend school revenue limits not for two years, but for four centuries.
The liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the so-called “400-year veto” last year and homeowners have already seen the single biggest increase in their property taxes in at least 30 years.
They’re feeling similar pain when they open their utility bills, too. Evers’ appointees to the Public Service Commission (PSC) have rubber-stamped more than $2.2 billion in rate hikes since gaining majority control, seven times what occurred under Scott Walker’s PSC in a comparable period. Electricty and heat bills have skyrocketed for the average family have skyrocketed, and the federal government has nothing to do with it.
The Wisconsin GOP cannot wait until fall to explain this to potential Tiffany voters. The messaging needs to start now. Every door-knocker, every mailer, every advertisement needs to explain simply and coherently to Trump voters that decisions made in Madison have a much greater impact on their pocketbooks than those made in Washington, DC.
All politics, the old saying goes, is local. Trump voters need to understand that, and they need to understand the urgency with which they must act to retake their state just like they retook their country in 2024. 140,000 of them showed up when they believed the stakes were high. Show them that they’re even higher now, and they’ll show up again—this time in elections for the offices that shape their real cost of living.
The window is narrow, but the data is clear and the opportunity is very real: Show these voters how badly a Democrat governor screwed up their personal finances and they’ll line up to vote for a Republican.
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