[1] The Democratic Party had been uncompetitive outside certain eastern German as the upper classes, along with the majority of workers who followed them, fled from William Jennings Bryan's agrarian and free silver sympathies.

These counties viewed Russian Communism as a much greater threat to America than German Nazism,[4] and believed Roosevelt offered too much aid to Britain and France.

Early Gallup polls in August showed Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey leading Roosevelt in Wisconsin[6] by as much as twelve percentage points at the end of the second week of that month.

[10] At that time Governor Dewey visited Milwaukee on a rail trip to Minneapolis,[11] and more detailed opinion polls later in October said that powerful isolationist sentiment in rural Wisconsin and tighter unity of his opposition would ensure that Roosevelt had little hope of holding the state.

Continuing trends in Third Party System Democratic counties around Green Bay and Appleton proved decisive in tipping the state, as Dewey tightened Willkie gains that would not be substantially reversed in the ensuing eighty years: even during Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide, Republican Barry Goldwater did much better in this area than he did nationally.