Colin Fisher is a sophomore honors student at the University of Arkansas majoring in mathematics with a focus on statistics and a minor in STEM education. From Guy, Arkansas, Fisher is involved with the Wesley Student Ministry and sits on their leadership committee. Following college, Fisher is interested in joining the front office of a pro sports team as a scout or data analyst.
Over the last six presidential elections, no state has been as close to the political center as Wisconsin. In four of the last six elections, the vote margin between Democrats and Republicans has been within one percentage point of each other. Furthermore, in two of the last six, the vote margin has been within half a percentage point. Wisconsin is on a four-election streak of their popular vote being in line with the overall winning candidate (Biden, Trump, Obama x2), so it will be important to pay attention to how the vote does come out.
The importance of Wisconsin cannot be overstated. The Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee. Kamala Harris’s first rally as the presidential nominee was in Milwaukee as well. Both parties understand that Wisconsin’s recent history of razor-thin margins could be exactly what they need to tip the scales in 2024. Kamala Harris has outraised Trump at a 3 to 1 clip. As we know, though, the immeasurable value of earned media that Trump has created along with significant donations to conservative Super PACs—Elon Musk’s donation of $119 million to his own Super PAC being an example—helps erase a lot of the Harris campaign’s financial advantages. However, the value of being in person at a rally is also important. Trump visited Wisconsin four times in eight days earlier this month. Kamala countered with six visits before mid-October. Undoubtedly, the two candidates understand the importance of winning Wisconsin.
For the previous election polling history, I focused mainly on the Marquette Law School polls from roughly a week before each election to collect my data. In 2012, Marquette Law School predicted Barack Obama over Mitt Romney 51% to 43%. The actual results were 52.8% to 45.9% in favor of Obama. In 2016, Marquette Law School predicted Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump 46% to 40%, however, the actual results were 47.2% to 46.5% in favor of Trump. In 2020, Marquette Law School predicted Joe Biden over Donald Trump 48% to 43% and the actual results were 49.5% to 48.8% in favor of Biden. In the most recent polls for the 2024 election, Marquette Law School found that Kamala Harris had a 1% lead over Trump 48% to 47%.
The mathematical side in me wanted to take the polling error and create confidence intervals based on the data to predict what will happen in 2024. Based on the polling error from the true mean and based on the predictions made by Marquette Law School for 2024, the interval percentage of votes that I am 95% confident in are as follows: Kamala Harris will receive between 45.8% and 50.2% of the popular vote while Donald Trump will receive between 42.8% and 51.2% of the votes.
Prediction: While based on a small subset of data, Donald Trump has a higher ceiling and lower floor. If anyone were to claim they knew what would happen in Wisconsin for a fact, even just a week before the election, they would be lying. Everything at this point is just based on hypotheses. If I were to have to guess with what I know and what the data shows, the greater variance in Trump’s percentages would have to make me lean toward Kamala Harris, however, mark my words: I predict that the final vote in Wisconsin will be within a percentage point again this election.