NBC's Chuck Todd to 'embed' reporters in Milwaukee County to gauge Democrats' chances in 2020

MADISON - The story of 2016 has been told from farm fields and forests in the rural heart of Wisconsin where President Donald Trump inspired voters who hadn't been in years. 

But the last presidential election was also decided by Wisconsin residents miles away in the city and suburbs of Milwaukee County who stayed home on Election Day and largely out of the spotlight since.

NBC News and "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd want to bring those voters back into focus with a yearlong assignment, connecting reporters with Milwaukee County in an effort to gauge Democrats' chances in the 2020 election.

"This is where we’re going to find out: can Democrats fire up their base?" Todd said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The reporting project deploys reporters to five counties in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — each county picked to examine a different part of the equation of victory (or loss).

In Wisconsin, Todd wants to find 12 to 20 Milwaukee County residents to stay in touch with until Election Day — tracking what they're hearing from candidates, the local issues, and the area's economy along the way.

Instead of traveling to a county in Wisconsin that swung to Trump, Todd said he wants to put scrutiny on Milwaukee County because of the predictor that turnout there has been for Democrats' chances in recent elections. 

"I want to throughout the next year to be able to understand those dynamics as well as we can on the ground," he said. "We’re going to essentially embed ourselves in these counties.”

Wisconsin's voter turnout in the 2016 election was the lowest in two decades with 3,000 fewer people voting for a presidential candidate that year than in the U.S. Senate race on the same ballot. 

Turnout was down especially in the state's most populous county, where Hillary Clinton received about 39,000 fewer votes than former President Barack Obama did in 2012. Vote totals in the county were even lower than 2004 election turnout when Obama was not on the ballot. 

“You could hear a mouse piss on cotton in Milwaukee (before the 2016 election). There was no activity anywhere," U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat who represents the county in the 4th Congressional District, told the Journal Sentinel in 2018. 

Milwaukee County is consistent in how it votes but not in how many votes its residents cast — unlike the state's other Democratic stronghold of Dane County, which consistently boasts high turnout. 

Meanwhile, turnout among Republican voters in the county has barely wavered over the years, making Democratic turnout the key to whether a Democrat can win the county and ultimately the state, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden. 

"In recent presidential elections, about one of out of every five Democratic votes has come from Milwaukee County, so it is essential that the party perform well there to win the state," Burden said.

Burden said the Clinton campaign and state Democrats were confident about their chances of winning the state going into the 2016 election, despite awareness that enthusiasm had dropped off among African-Americans and young people — core constituencies for Democratic campaigns and heavily represented in Milwaukee County. 

"That’s why we singled out Milwaukee County," Todd said. "When Milwaukee County is high, it's hard for Republicans to win." 

Todd said his project begins now in an effort to understand how the presidential candidates and Wisconsin voters are communicating — a dynamic reporters largely didn't see before.

"I'm hoping to find some of these citizen observers who will help us have a better conversation," Todd said. "That’s what happened in 2016. ... The Trump campaign had a different conversation with voters than many of us realized.”

He said the project also will track how African Americans are feeling about candidates to see whether the lower participation in 2016 is a problem Democrats will face again.  

Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said the party deployed teams to Milwaukee County's neighborhoods in 2017 to avoid a repeat performance.

In contrast, he said, the party's turnout operation in the county was largely built after the 2016 Democratic National Convention was held — just four months before the election. The state's new voter ID law also took full effect in 2016, making early engagement important, he said.

"We're talking to voters to build a relationship and trust, not just ask for their vote," he said. "The most vital thing is to meet people where they are in their communities, listen to them and make sure Democratic campaigns reflect that listening as opposed to ideas cooked up far away."

Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, said the prominent issues facing potential voters she works to engage are largely related to family-supporting jobs, gun violence and criminal justice policies, including the lasting impact of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

The group works year-round to boost enthusiasm for public participation, seeking to give potential voters tools to decide which candidate on any ballot can best address their needs. Often, those issues spring from local and state policies, Lang said. 

"We saw the results of 2016 and people’s gut reaction was to blame the turnout in Milwaukee specifically and some of that blame was actually toward into the black community," Lang said. "It's really important for us to not wait until the next election cycle to really engage people."

Todd's project, called "County to County," launches Sunday on "Meet the Press" and culminates on Election Day. 

Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.