SHOT: COVID-19 Cases skyrocket in Wisconsin and voters are laser focused on health care. 

Wisconsin broke a new daily record for coronavirus this week, reporting more than 3,000 new cases and more than 900 people hospitalized

  • “Wisconsin reported a record 3,132 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 Thursday, surpassing 3,000 daily cases for the first time amid a weeks-long surge in cases and hospitalizations. The state also had a record 907 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, with a record 228 of them in intensive care… Andrea Palm, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, said the state is “in crisis,” and the facility “will free up beds in our hospitals to better care for more severely ill COVID and non-COVID patients… The GOP-led Legislature has met only once, in April, to take up legislation in response to COVID-19.” [Wisconsin State Journal, 10/9/20]
Sen. Tammy Baldwin highlights that health care is on the ballot
  • “‘Ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed we’ve been hearing time and time again from the Republicans that they would offer something better. So where is their plan? As a candidate, Donald Trump promised he’d lower health care and lower prescription drug costs, all while protecting people with preexisting conditions. And yet, we see from this administration effort after effort to cut health care and promote junk insurance plans that aren’t even worth the paper they’re written on,’ Baldwin said.”  [News8000, 9/25/20]
Wisconsin residents with pre-existing conditions talk about Trump’s attacks on the ACA and his failure to combat COVID-19
  • “After his failure to respond to COVID-19 when it could have made a difference, more than 1,300 Wisconsinites have died and our state’s economy is in turmoil… Your political leaning doesn’t matter when our lives literally hang in the balance this November. For the sake of people like me with preexisting conditions, for your family, for your community, and for your country, please vote for the candidates who take this crisis seriously and are doing everything possible to keep us safe.” [The Cap Times, 10/7/20]
CHASER: Trump’s path to victory in Wisconsin and in the electoral college fades

Trump is failing in the the blue collar hub of Green Bay, the swinging suburbs of Milwaukee, and his margins are down in the rural areas he carried in 2016

  • “President Donald Trump’s once-comfortable advantage in the pivotal region of Wisconsin around the blue-collar hub of Green Bay has dwindled. In suburban Milwaukee, long a Republican-dominated area, it has thinned as well. And his supporters are far from confident he can find thousands of new voters in the state’s sparsely populated rural areas to make up for the setbacks. Trump’s path to victory in Wisconsin, a state he won narrowly in 2016, has become increasingly complicated, and so has his path to the 270 electoral votes needed for his reelection… GOP legislative surveys noted by strategists are also prompting worries that there’s little time to rebuild the margins they need to win the state a second time… But Trump would have to attract several thousand first-time voters in the sparsely populated rural north, where in several counties he received more than 60% of the vote, to compensate for the declines in more populous parts of the state… What’s more, Marquette’s September poll shows Biden, not Trump, receiving more support from first-time voters. ‘Can you squeeze enough votes out of there to make the difference?’ Jensen said. ‘Probably not.’” [AP, 10/8/20]
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