Politicos at a WisPolitics-State Affairs 2026 election-year preview offered a bullish assessment of Dem fortunes ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Marquette University Law School poll Director Charles Franklin and Democratic strategist Tanya Bjork during the Dec. 18 discussion in Madison both predicted the economy and health care issues will be key drivers for voters next fall in fall races for governor, attorney general and the Legislature.Â
GOP strategist Keith Gilkes acknowledged Republicans faced an uphill climb in state and local races. Still, he argued Republicans could still run strong races.
“We have a long runway between now and November of next year,” Gilkes said.
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Panelists discussed several factors boosting Dems: President Donald Trump’s bad poll numbers, recent Dem election wins around the country, and Democrats’ winning streak in state Supreme Court elections. Another Supreme Court race is set for the spring.
According to an MU Law election data analysis, several vulnerable Republican seats in the Assembly and state Senate are in districts that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.
“I’m very optimistic that we walk away with a full boat here,” Bjork said.
Gilkes, on the other hand, argued that Republicans could overcome their disadvantage by focusing on local issues, like rising property taxes and spending on K-12 schools, and avoiding the increasingly nationalized view of politics.
“(Voters) don’t care about D.C.,” Gilkes said. “They don’t think anything in D.C. affects them, except when it screws them.”
Bjork and Gilkes split the furthest on the 3rd Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, is seen as the state’s most vulnerable member of Congress.
Gilkes argued Van Orden had weathered tough campaign cycles before. Bjork pointed out that Van Orden had won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2024, meaning Democrats “don’t even need to overperform by all that much” to unseat the incumbent.
Franklin said many downballot races would ultimately tack to the governor’s race, and that issues in that campaign would dictate the narrative around smaller races.
“Don’t count Democrats out on being able to find the wrong issues to run on,” Franklin joked.
On the governor’s race, Bjork and Gilkes both said they were satisfied with their respective parties’ candidates, though Gilkes noted that “anybody can walk into this thing” later in the election cycle, especially if they could self-fund their campaign.
Bjork said Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2022, is the presumptive frontrunner in the Dem primary as the candidate with the best name ID. But she said fundraising reports out Jan. 15 could shift the landscape of the Democratic primary.
“He starts as the frontrunner. We’ll see if he stays as the frontrunner,” Bjork said.
