GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Campaign visits are a prime opportunity for the top of ticket candidates to get their message out, and they have come early and often in the swing state of Wisconsin.
But our region, specifically, hasn’t been as busy compared to other parts of the state.
Between Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Tim Walz and J.D. Vance, Wisconsin has seen 27 visits from major candidates on the presidential tickets this year.
However, only two of those visits have been to Northeast Wisconsin: Trump in Green Bay in April and Vance two weeks ago in De Pere.
“I don’t have any inside information on the campaign strategy, but the Green Bay media market is a substantial share — close to a quarter of registered voters statewide — so it’s certainly an important area to visit,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, which showed the presidential race was basically a toss-up in its latest poll conducted about a month ago.
The major candidates have made 13 visits to Milwaukee, about half of the total appearances in Wisconsin. That includes Trump and Vance visits for the Republican National Convention. Seven visits have been to the western part of the state, three in Madison and two to central Wisconsin.
“It is pretty striking that they have been heavy in the southeast and Milwaukee, but of course we just saw Trump in Mosinee this week, and we saw him in La Crosse recently as well,” said Franklin.
Franklin’s best guess for why the campaigns haven’t visited our area as much is they’re saving the trips for later in the campaign to have greater impact.
“It’s also an area that while it leans Republican a good bit, the cities in the TV market have been trending Democratic, while some of the outlying areas have been becoming very deeply Republican,” said Franklin.
We reached out to both the Trump and Harris campaigns for their thoughts on the lack of visits here. While neither could provide us anyone for an interview, a representative for the Harris campaign shared a visit from the top of the ticket should be coming very soon.
Our area has still seen plenty of surrogate visits including first lady Jill Biden and Donald Trump Jr.
Franklin says while those visits help fire up the party base, they do not compare to the actual candidates.
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