SUMMARY: The blog post discusses the recent shift in the Wisconsin Republican Party’s stance on gerrymandering and their endorsement of a non-partisan commission to draw legislative districts. It explores the reasons behind this change, highlighting the risk aversion principle in behavioral economics. The post analyzes the electoral history in Wisconsin, showing the growing support for Democratic candidates and the narrowing margins of victories for Republicans. It suggests that the GOP’s shift is a response to the perceived risk of losing control of the state legislature. Overall, the post examines the psychology and motivations behind the Republican Party’s decision.
KEY WORS: Wisconsin Republican Party, gerrymandering, non-partisan commission, legislative districts, risk aversion, behavioral economics, electoral history, Democrats, Republicans, state legislature, psychology, motivations.
Currently in Wisconsin: Obscenely Gerrymandered to Favor the Republican Party
In the news lately has been the Wisconsin’s Republican dominated legislature’s attempts to maintain their death grip — as in strangling democracy since a permanent majority is inherently anti-democratic — by defending their obscene gerrymandering of their legislative districts both federal and state and removing the Democratic majority from their state Supreme Court. That second part is important since they could Merrick Garland recently elected justice Janet Protasiewicz simply by impeaching her in the House and refusing to try her in the Senate allowing her to remain on the Court without fulfilling the duties of her office as provided in Wisconsin state law.
They were openly contemplating such a move to prevent her from participating in the gerrymandering cases the state Democratic Party has brought keeping the court deadlocked by straight “party” line vote since Wisconsin Supreme Court justices aren’t supposed to be affiliated with a political party or have legal opinions before reaching the bench, but that’s a story for another post.
Why’d The Wisconsin GOP Embrace a Commission for Legislative Districts?
Now, however, the Wisconsin legislature has reversed its radical stand on keeping its depraved gerrymander and endorsed an Iowa-style non-partisan commission to draw its legislative districts.
Whether you’re like me and immediately cosplayed Admiral Ackbar or you think, as Senate Majority Leader, Robin Vos, said, “Sometimes you have to listen, and you change your mind… people want politicians who say, ‘I have an open mind to be persuaded,'” is telling the truth, it doesn’t matter. The GOP may be adhering to their long tradition of hoodwinking voters while they gut our democracy or Vos may genuinely want to run the risk of the GOP losing control of the state legislature like they have the state-wide races.
The question is why would he take that risk or why would he want to try and trick everyone into thinking he is. Both questions have the same answer.
Applying Behavioral Economics: The Principle of Risk Aversion
A well-established principle of behavior economics is that people will avoid risk, unless it is in the face of a sure loss. The theory is that we assess our decisions with regard to how they’ll affect us right now. If one decision is a risk, then we are loathe to take it. Of course, what seems like a risk today, may not have seemed like a risk yesterday. Think Trump’s election in 2016 and his loss in 2020. It also explains the incumbency effect. Which makes Trump’s loss in 2020 as the incumbent all the more startling and his wide support in the GOP a real ass scratcher.
Now, that we have a decision by the GOP to, at least, ostensibly support fairly drawn legislative districts, we can work backward through the behavioral economics of it all. What did the GOP see as a risk?
Election Outcomes: Trending Against the Wisconsin Republican Party Since 2018
Janet Protasiewicz’s election to the Supreme Court was by a whopping ten percentage points! She openly and expressly ran on being pro-choice and anti-gerrymandering. There are five partisan state-wide offices in the state government. There are two state Senators. Here’s how their elections break down by year. See if you can spot the risk.
- 2010: Senate, Russian tool, Ron Johnson (R), 51.9% – 47.0%
- 2012: Senate, Tammy Baldwin (D), 51.5% – 45.9%
- 2014:
- Governor, Scott Whodat? Walker (R), 52.3% – 46.6%
- Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Who? Kleefisch (R), 52.3% – 46.6%
- Attorney General, Brad Schimmel (R), 51.5% – 45.4%
- Secretary of State, Doug La Follette (D), 50% – 46.3%
- State Treasurer, David Sartori (R), 51.5% – 48.5%
- 2016: Senate, Russian tool, Ron Johnson (R), 51.2% – 46.8%
- 2018:
- Senate, Tammy Baldwin (D), 55.4% – 44.6%
- Governor, Tony Evers (D) 49.5% – 48.4%
- Lieutenant Governor, Mandela Barnes (D), 49.5% – 44.6%
- Attorney General, Josh Kaul (D), 49.4% – 48.8%
- Secretary of State, Doug La Follette (D), 52.7% – 47.2%
- State Treasurer, Sarah Godlewski (D), 50.9% – 46.8%
- 2022:
- Senate, Russian tool, Ron Johnson (R), 50.4% – 49.4%
- Governor, Tony Evers (D), 51.1 % – 47.8%
- Lieutenant Governor, Sara Rodriguez (D), 51.7% – 48.3%
- Attorney General, Josh Kaul (D), 50.6% – 49.3%
- Secretary of State, Doug La Follette (D), 48.3% – 48.0%
- State Treasurer, John Leiber (R), 49.6% – 48.1%
While there have been some squeakers in there, eh, Russian Tool? The Dems have done pretty darn well for themselves including Protasiewicz’s blow out last year.
Motivations for the Shift: Sure Loss of their Super-Majority
You take pro-choice votes, the anti-gerrymandering vote, and the growing size of top state-wide Democratic winning margins and the shrinking size of state-wide Republican winning margins, and you get the feeling that the voters of Wisconsin are not so inclined to be supporting the permanent majority monkeyshines of the legislature. I guess that’s what Vos meant when he said voters wanted elected officials to listen and change their minds.
I think the Wisconsin GOP has seen these numbers and realized there is a HUGE risk involved with pursuing their current legislative strategies and policies. They need to pour some oil on the waters here and hope that they can sneak a gerrymandered state legislative map through the “new” bipartisan process and retain the legislature.
Republicans are facing sure losses. They have to take risks now. That’s the reason for the change in tune from Wisconsin’s Republican legislature on drawing districts. I guess that’s progress, right?
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Categories: Behavior Economics, Loss Aversion
The Psy of Life 
It’s my understanding that under this proposal the state legislature could, with a simple majority vote, disapprove of any maps drawn by the commission and modify them or write their own. Basically the legislature, not the people of the state, would still have the ultimate authority to draw up the district maps.
They are indeed desperate right now. Their threats to impeach Protasiewicz have met with strong resistance, even from within the GOP. Their attempts to force her to recuse herself from the upcoming hearings on gerrymandered districts aren’t working too well either because the conservative justices on the court have a long, long history of refusing to recuse themselves even from cases that involved issues they were personally concerned with. Now they can’t even find anyone to try to run against Tammy Baldwin for the US senate seat. The only “candidate” that’s claimed he’s interested is former Milwaukee sheriff Clark, and he’s so toxic that not even the Republicans in the state want anything to do with him.
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Howdy Grouchy!
You are in Wisconsin, aren’t you? So, it is good to get the perspective of someone actually in the state. I’ve found it difficult to get a clear understanding of how the districting law would actually work. The more I find out about it, though, the more it sounds like the old bait and switch.
It is remarkable to me how completely the state GOP dominates the legislature with a minority of the statewide vote, and that SCOTUS deems such political gerrymandering as acceptable. Of course, the only way that decision becomes understandable is to jettison the notion of applying the law, precedent, and traditions of our democracy, and just blatantly making political rulings instead.
Ron Johnson’s margins of victory have been declining with each election, and his last election was by a percentage point or so. While 2024 isn’t likely to be a wave election, it could still see the GOP lose all of the statewide elections, and their legislative majority elected with an even smaller percentage of the vote. That must keep some of them up at night. It will be interesting to see if dissatisfaction with the GOP and their support for anti-democratic laws and policies will cost them any of their less robustly gerrymandered districts.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I am in Wisconsin. The situation here is — odd, to say the least. The state is split almost 50-50 Dem to GOP, but despite that they currently hold a supermajority in the state legislature because of how they’ve manipulated things over the last couple of decades.
Things have not been going well for them here in the state either. As you pointed out almost all state wide political offices have been going to democrats, often by significant numbers. The Gabbleman fiasco didn’t help. Our former supreme court justice was so utterly incompetent that even Vos, the man who hired him to “investigate” the election, ended up firing him and calling the investigation a farce.
Despite the fact that it seems only the extremists turn up in the media these days, there are still quite a few moderate Republicans out there who are fed up with all of this. So unless the legislature moderates its tone there is a good chance they’ll start losing seats in the next election. The moderates won’t vote democratic, true, but they won’t go out to vote at all, which is almost as bad for them.
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Howdy Grouch!
I would hope that all Americans in 2024 will go out and vote Democrat just because the Republicans ruined the best elections jokes: Vote for the candidate of your choice as many times as you can! or some variation. Otherwise, it’d be nice if they would wake up and realize that the GOP is actively trying to destroy our democracy and only a landslide victory up and down the ticket by Democrats will stop them.
Right now, anyone who remains a Republican, moderate or not, has to be considered on board and actively promoting the fascisting of America.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The report about the Wisconsin situation on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday [https://www.npr.org/2023/09/15/1199740670/wisconsin-election-battles-protasiewicz-wolfe-republicans] brought out a key about the redistricting commission proposal, that the legislature would be appointing the commissioners. In other words they would plan on packing the commission. That is why the Governor, a Democrat, has said he would veto the law setting up the commission if it get to him. So, yes, they are lying and tricking.
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Howdy Bob!
In researching the post, I read several descriptions of the law, but it was never clear to me exactly how it worked. Something about three tries at making maps and then the third one would be used and could be tweaked. I’ll read the article. Hopefully, it will explain more about what they were trying to do. However the law worked, though, we can be sure it would not be a good faith effort to draw fair districts.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Exactly. The only way it makes sense is as a process over which they would have enough control for it to be less damaging than maps drawn by somebody else, such as a court.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m always happy when my inner Ackbar is right even if it is only when someone is luring you into a trap.
The plan that they’ve put forward, as I understand it, is really just an extension of their gaslighting of the public. They claim it will be a neutrally drawn map like those in Iowa — Are those really neutral, though? I haven’t looked into it enough to figure it out. — but, of course, they will be just more of the same with a little thicker coat of gold varnish spread over the same old stale manure.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The saying goes that the Devil is in the details, and we can be pretty sure that is true in this case.
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It’s probably why they introduced and passed it in two days and the reporting has been so confused on it.
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It smells of distraction and gaslighting, which doesn’t come as a surprise.
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Yep.
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