Politics in Wisconsin since the Populist movement had been dominated by the Republican Party,[1] as the upper classes, along with the majority of workers who followed them, fled from William Jennings Bryan's agrarian and free silver sympathies.

[5] Consequently, these historically Democratic counties became virtually the most Republican in the entire state, and became a major support base for populist conservative Senator Joe McCarthy, who became notorious for his investigations into Communists inside the American government.

Ultimate Republican nominee Barry Goldwater considered Wisconsin a useful state to combine with his Southern and Western strategy for winning the presidency and directing the GOP away from the declining Yankee Northeast.

[10] Early polls nevertheless showed incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson leading Goldwater comfortably,[13] despite predictions of a severe backlash to the Civil Rights Act from Wisconsin's anti-black German-American and Polish-American populations.

Goldwater held up slightly better in the German areas where conservative Republicanism had been established by anti-World War II sentiment, whilst he lost heavily in the Yankee counties of the south.