GREEN BAY — It was a partisan election of historic proportions.
Aug. 13 broke voter turnout records in Green Bay for the third year in a row. The primary was also the first election to use newly-drawn electoral maps that shifted some voters and candidates into new jurisdictions.
With so much change, here are 15 graphs that visualize the record primary turnout and how redistricting has shifted the political calculus for many candidates in the greater Green Bay area.
Record voter turnout wasn't because of more absentee ballots
The 2024 primary was the most participated partisan election since 2008 in Green Bay, continuing a three-year record-breaking streak, and a growing trend of voter participation over the past six cycles.
Celestine Jeffreys, Green Bay's city clerk, issued 7,113 absentee ballots; 5,848 were submitted by the end of the polling day on Aug. 13. That means over 82% of people who requested and were sent an absentee ballot submitted their votes that way.
Despite high absentee participation, however, it was within expectations for the city clerk, who said that absentee ballots have consistently made up between 28% and 31% of all votes during primaries. This year, absentee voting participation was at the high end of that threshold at 31%.
What the city clerk and chief inspectors noticed on primary day was an increase in turnout at the polls. Some polling stations had lines, unusual for a primary election, Jeffreys said, while others used up half of their ballots by midday.
"That means more voters than I anticipated," said Jeffreys, who determines the amount of ballots to give each polling location based on that ward's population and usually expects 72% to 80% of the voting public to vote on election day. As of the end of the day on Aug. 13, there were 49,368 registered voters in Green Bay, not including those who registered the day of voting.
While Jeffreys said that half of the polling places had more voters than expected, the data show that nearly all wards saw a dramatic increase in turnout compared to the 2022 primary, with Ward 31 more than doubling its participation.
Green Bay's 51 wards are numbered starting in the east and go west. Some have letters due to districts being split, following in the spirit of Wisconsin's electoral map changes. But as a rule of thumb, single-digit numbers are on the east side of Green Bay, numbers in the 40s are on the west side, and between the two extremes are wards closest to the city center.
But more participation in this year's primary didn't mean parties equally benefitted from the turnout.
Republican skew in the few populous wards; a Democratic lean in wards with less voter turnout
Ward 31 sits between West Mason Street and Biemeret Street on the city's west side. In this year's 8th Congressional District Republican primary race split between three candidates, their total votes combined in Ward 31 outperformed their Democratic challenger by 26%.
In the wards that produced the most voters — situated towards the edges of the city — voters heavily leaned Republican.
Kurt Frewing, the communications manager for Kristin Lyerly, the Democratic candidate in the 8th Congressional District, said that while they recognize the challenge this race poses for any Democrat, he sees the trend shifting bluer over time.
Many wards did lean Democratic this primary, but these wards, mostly concentrated in the city's middle, didn't produce as many voters as the more populous edges of Green Bay, and the lean toward the Democratic candidate wasn't as strong as those wards that lean Republican.
One way to look at the graph below is how partisan a particular ward is: the longer the line, the more partisan-leaning it is in the 8th Congressional District race.
But compared to the last time the 8th Congressional District was a highlighted race in 2020, Lyerly outperformed the 2020 Democratic candidate, Amanda Stuck, in several high-population wards. Lyerly increased voter participation in Ward 14, next to the Astor neighborhood, by 207%, and Ward 42, running along South Military Avenue on the west side by 168%. These were wards that saw relatively low voter turnout in 2020.
However, Lyerly fared worse — and sometimes, significantly worse — in wards that did turn out more voters in 2020, like Ward 40 at the west end of Dousman Street and Ward 30, next to the ward in this year's voter turnout spotlight, Ward 31.
Lyerly's worse voter turnout in these wards did not necessarily translate into more support in these wards for the three Republican candidates, businessman Tony Wied from De Pere, former state Sen. Roger Roth from Appleton, and state Sen. Andre Jacque from De Pere.
Ward 30 gave 11.5% less votes to the three candidates combined than it did back in 2020 when the 8th Congressional District elected former Rep. Mike Gallagher. The three candidates were vying to take Gallagher's place after he resigned.
But voters across the board turned out en masse for the three Republican candidates, doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling voter turnout in some wards.
The 8th Congressional District wasn't changed much during the redistricting, and has elected a Republican to the seat since 2010.
But for districts that did shift their boundaries, often quite dramatically, their political character changed as well.
Some state Legislature districts are unrecognizable in borders and character
Before redistricting, the 30th Senate District stretched like a snake from Denmark through Green Bay up to Marinette.
Now, the 30th encompasses just Green Bay and several suburbs.
"They lopped off the top," said state Sen. Eric Wimberger at a "Vote Yes" Republican rally on Aug. 2. The incumbent senator for the 30th District was forced to run in the 2nd District after Wisconsin redrew its electoral maps. "It's going to be a shell of what it used to be, but all in the name of fairness, right? What some people call fair, anyway."
While neither the 2020 or 2024 primaries for these two districts were contested, since redistricting, Wimberger's Democratic rival in District 2, Kelly Peterson, outperformed in Democratic turnout nearly ten-fold. In Wimberger's old District 30, the Republican doubled Wimberger's 2020 turnout results. Because these results were for uncontested primaries, they are only an indication of the political makeup of these districts and should be viewed as such.
Assembly District 89 used to cover much of the northern part of Senate District 2 from Howard to Marinette. Its borders have changed almost entirely to cover just the west side of Green Bay and Ashwaubenon. More voters cast their ballots for the Republican candidate in 2022 than the Democratic one.
Not anymore.
Voter turnout for Ryan Spaude, the Democratic candidate from Ashwaubenon, leapfrogged that of the Republican challenger, Patrick Buckley of Green Bay.
No other Assembly district experienced such an about-face; many candidates struggled to match the turnout of their partisan rivals. But in Assembly District 88, which runs through De Pere, Allouez, and Bellevue, turnout for Democratic candidate Christy Welch of De Pere was within 1,000 votes of the turnout for both Republicans, Benjamin Franklin and and Phil Collins, both from De Pere.
The 2024 primary in Green Bay was all a numbers game, a game with new and unexpected results that the prevailing candidates will have to navigate and factor into their campaign calculus ahead of Election Day in 83 days.
Correction: A previous version of this article did not include results for Senate District 2 and 30. Analysis for both Senate District 2 and 30 are now included using Brown County data from 2020 and 2024.
Jesse Lin is a reporter covering the community of Green Bay and politics in northeast Wisconsin. Contact him at 920-431-8247 or jlin@gannett.com.
