Will Democrats Flip a US House Seat in Wisconsin in 2026?
Wisconsin Democrats have netted an average of one seat per cycle across the 23 midterm elections held during Republican presidencies
Despite multiple efforts by Wisconsin Democrats to persuade the state’s judiciary to order the redrawing of its congressional districts in recent years, the party has had no success.
Democrats – who have won more Wisconsin statewide elections during the 2020s (five) than their GOP counterparts (three) – only hold two of the state’s eight U.S. House seats. [Democratic-backed nonpartisan candidates for the state Supreme Court and Superintendent of Public Instruction are also undefeated in five contests during this period].
However, if the expected national partisan winds reach the Midwest this November, Democrats are bullish about their prospects to win back the state’s western 3rd CD (held by Democrat Ron Kind for 13 terms until his retirement in 2022) and hope the stars align for them to be on the plus side of what is likely to be a single-digit contest in the southern 1st CD.
It is often said that the sitting president’s party usually sheds U.S. House seats during midterm election cycles, and Wisconsin Democrats have certainly taken advantage of that trend over the decades.
Across the 23 midterm election cycles with a Republican president in the White House, Democrats have netted U.S. House seats in 14 cycles, lost seats in just two, and had no net change in seven.
Overall, Democrats have netted 24 congressional seats in Wisconsin during midterms with a Republican president, or an average of one seat per cycle.
The most recent example was in 2006 when physician Steve Kagen flipped the state’s open 8th CD by 2.1 points after Republican incumbent Mark Green decided to run for the U.S. Senate.
The biggest Democratic turnaround in Wisconsin came in 1890 when the party netted 86 seats nationwide. Democrats flipped six seats to turn a 7-2 deficit into an 8-1 advantage. The party flipped the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 9th CDs – knocking soon to be political icon Robert La Follette out of office plus three other incumbents along the way.
Democrats also netted U.S. House seats in these 12 other midterm cycles under Republican presidencies:
- 1862 (+3): Former Attorney General and Milwaukee Mayor James Brown unseated three-term incumbent John Potter in the 1st CD while former State Senator Charles Eldredge of Fond du Lac and Green Lake County Judge Ezra Wheeler won newly created seats after reapportionment doubled the state’s delegation to six seats
- 1870 (+1): Railroad president Alexander Mitchell of Milwaukee flipped the open 1st CD
- 1874 (+1): Circuit Court Judge George Cate of Stevens Point unseated freshman Alexander McDill of the 8th CD
- 1882 (+4): Assemblyman John Winans of Janesville unseated five-term incumbent Charles Williams in the 1st CD, former Waukesha County Attorney Daniel Sumner won the open 2nd CD, Dane County Attorney Burr Jones unseated three-term incumbent George Hazelton in the 3rd CD, and former La Crosse Mayor Gilbert Woodward won the open 7th CD (note: the state added one seat during reapportionment during this cycle)
- 1902 (+1): Former Sheboygan Falls City Council President Charles Weisse won the open 6th CD (note: the state added one seat during reapportionment during this cycle)
- 1906 (+1): Platteville Mayor James Murphy unseated seven-term incumbent Joseph Babcock in the 3rd CD
- 1910 (+1): Kewaunee County Attorney Thomas Konop unseated two-term incumbent Gustav Küstermann in the 9th CD
- 1930 (+1): Former two-term U.S. Representative Michael Reilly of Fond du Lac won the open 6th CD (and simultaneously won the special election to the seat)
- 1954 (+1): Milwaukee School Board member Henry Reuss unseated three-term incumbent Charles Kersten in the 5th CD
- 1958 (+2): Former State Senator and Racine attorney Gerald Flynn won the open 1st CD and Jefferson and Dodge County Justice of the Peace Robert Kastenmeier of Watertown won a rematch against freshman Donald Tewes in the 2nd CD
- 1970 (+1): Marquette University economics professor Les Aspin of Racine unseated four-term incumbent Henry Schadeberg in the 1st CD
- 1974 (+2): Assemblyman Alvin Baldus of Menomonie unseated seven-term incumbent Vernon Thomson in the 3rd CD and St. Norbert College professor Robert Cornell of De Pere unseated freshman Harold Froehlich in the 8th CD
In 1990, the aforementioned Kastenmeier – then a 16-term Democratic incumbent – lost his 2nd CD seat to Republican television anchor Scott Klug of Madison. This marked the only Democratic seat to flip in a midterm election under a Republican president in Wisconsin history.
The only other cycle in which Democrats technically lost a seat was in 2002, when reapportionment reduced the number of Wisconsin U.S. House seats from nine to eight. Five-term Milwaukee Democrat Tom Barrett chose not to run for reelection under the new map and instead launched a failed gubernatorial campaign. All eight incumbents – four Democrats and four Republicans – won reelection but Democrats were down a seat.
There was no net change in the number of Democrats in Wisconsin’s U.S. House delegation after the GOP presidency-held midterms of 1878, 1898, 1922, 1926, 1982, 1986, and 2018.
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– One of the “three” Republican statewide wins since 2021 is the 2024 presidential vote, if I am not mistaken.
– Based on both recent history and candidate calibre, CD-03 (hugging the southeastern MN border; parts of which comprise the ‘automobile’ suburbs of St. Paul, MN) seems somewhat more likely to be won by the Democrats than the less rural CD-01 (there is far less rationale for re-drawing the House district lines than the assembly and senate boundaries, thus no change of the federal constituencies even after the Right & Far Right lost their Court majority in 2023).
– The Democrats might well have stood a better chance of retaining the Madison-anchored seat in 1990 without an apparently complacent incumbent, one of those counterintuitive instances where the in-party has better electoral odds *without* its incumbent standing for another term (Governor Walz standing down arguably has augmented the likelihood of his DFL party notching its 5th consecutive win for governor/lieutenant governor, a first since the terms of both offices were lengthened).
Correct: Republican statewide wins in the 2020s are Ron Johnson for U.S. Senator in 2022, Jon Leiber for Treasurer in 2022, and Trump in 2024.
Reports after the 1990 loss by Kastenmeier to Klug contrasted the incumbent’s low-key, non-flashy, all-business approach to legislating (and campaigning) while Klug was dynamic, and more well-known than the average challenger, given his profession as a news anchor. Still, the result sent shockwaves through the state, especially because it was not a GOP wave election (Democrats netted +7 seats that cycle).