America's Dairyland.

Tuesday's elections.

John Ellis is easily one of the five most insightful and wired-in political minds I have ever met or read. — Charlie Cook, founder of The Cook Political Report.

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Let’s give Mr. Trump a rest for a minute and talk about the upcoming State Supreme Court special election in Wisconsin.

Start with former House Speaker' Tip O’Neill’s famous adage (vintage 1970s): “All politics is local.” The nearly-exact opposite is true today. All politics is (mostly) national.

There are exceptions. Back in 2023, the three most popular governors in the United States were Republicans from three of the bluest states in the nation: Phil Scott in Vermont, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and Larry Hogan in Maryland. Good governors can buck a national tide, because their elections focus or can be focused on what’s happening at the state level.

At the federal level, however, elections mirror the Red or Blue complexion of each state. Candidates (good and bad) can tip a state this way or that, in states where Red and Blue are truly competitive. (Think Herschel Walker in Georgia in 2022). But only to a degree. (Herschel Walker got 49% of the vote in the 2022 run-off election and he was a terrible candidate).

A Democratic or Republican candidate for the US Senate in Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Georgia will have a very hard time getting more than 52% of the total vote. In Wisconsin last November, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) was re-elected by a bit less than 30,000 votes out of ~3.4 million cast. These days, a four-point win in a “toss-up” US Senate race qualifies as a semi-landslide. In Red states, Red wins. In Blue States, Blue wins. Basic fact: Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are the only states in the nation that have US Senators who caucus with opposing parties.

So that’s Part One. Politics is (mostly) national.

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Part Two is another reversal. When I first started covering politics (a long time ago, sadly), one of the rules was: Republicans do better in mid-term elections because their voters are richer, better-educated, more “engaged” and therefore turn out in larger numbers than do Democrats. Democrats do better in presidential years because parts of their coalition are heavily dependent on government insurance programs of various kinds and having a Democratic president is safer than the alternative. (It’s not as simple as that, obviously. We could go down the rabbit hole and look at it twelve ways to Sunday, but let’s not).

Today, the (almost) exact opposite is true. Democrats turn out in higher numbers in mid-term elections. Republican turnout in presidential years increases substantially. This has been “especially” true during the Trump era (2016 to the present).

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Which brings us to Steve Kornacki, NBC News’s enthusiastic and astute election analyst and perhaps the best — some would say only — reason to watch MSNBC’s election night programming. Mr. Kornacki recently took a look at the special election for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, which “takes place” this coming Tuesday, April Fools Day. (I say “takes place” with quotation marks because early voting is well underway.)

This video clip featuring Mr. Kornacki neatly describes the Part Two reversal. I encourage you to watch it. If you’re interested in the actual vote, by county, it’s what you need to know going into next Tuesday evening.

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Which, at last, brings us to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court special election itself. Here’s the set-up from Reid Epstein of The New York Times (whose coverage of the Wisconsin race has been informative and well-written):