No state may be more politically polarized right now than Wisconsin. That follows the effort by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of most public workers there. The divide is most apparent between Wisconsin's biggest cities and its smallest towns.
Wisconsin is one of those rare states that seems to go back and forth between electing Democrats and Republicans almost every cycle. President Obama won it by a wide margin in 2008, but then the state flipped dramatically last year with a near Republican sweep — and last month's state supreme court election was so close, votes are still being recounted.
"Wisconsin is not just a battleground state, Wisconsin is not just a divided state, but we're literally a 50-50 state," says Mordecai Lee, a former state lawmaker who's now a professor of Governmental Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
"It's almost like Wisconsin is so evenly split that there must be one little old lady who tilts our elections one way or the other, I mean, that's how close we are," he says. "It's just unbelievable."
The battle over collective bargaining is hardening views in the state that gave birth to the nation's first public unions. It's clear Wisconsinites are taking sides.
