Important issues for the state party include support for workers and unions, strong public education, and environmental protection.

The Democratic Party dominated the first decade of state government, winning 25 of the first 30 elections for statewide partisan offices, while holding large majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature and among the congressional delegations.

Their principal opposition, however, the Whig Party, held more nativist positions and over time began exploiting the resentments between immigrants and non-immigrants and between Protestants and Catholics.

But national Democratic policies continued to undermine those efforts, as the Compromise of 1850 and its Fugitive Slave Act component further inflamed anti-slavery sentiment in Wisconsin and other northern states.

[6] Anti-slavery emotion was further excited with the arrest of Milwaukee abolitionist newspaper publisher Sherman Booth, who had led a mob to free Joshua Glover in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act.

[6] Despite the internal divisions, Barstow won the governorship and Wisconsin Democrats were able to maintain power in the state until anti-slavery factions finally coalesced with northern Whigs into the new Republican Party in 1854.

[6] Democratic voting power in the state continued to wane as Republicans won full control of the Legislature in 1856 and retained the governorship in 1857.

Despite a strong showing by Democratic candidates in the 1862 congressional elections, Republicans continued to hold full power over state government throughout the war.

Republicans dominated statewide politics in Wisconsin through much of the post-war 19th century, and cultivated special interests in railroads, the lumber industry, and unionized labor.

Their political power in the state was further enhanced with their ability to deliver significant funding from the Republican-dominated federal government for projects in Wisconsin.

Despite being in the ideological minority, Wisconsin Democrats did take advantage of several controversies and Republican excesses to win significant state-wide elections during this period.

Following the Panic of 1873, Democrats allied with Liberal Republicans and members of the Granger movement to create a coalition known as the Reform Party.

[9] The backlash against the Bennett Law unified disparate cultural, religious, and ideological factions of Wisconsin's German, Scandinavian, Irish, Polish, and Catholic communities, and fueled massive Democratic wave elections in 1890 and 1892.

[11] Between 1894 and 1932, no Democratic candidate for Governor of Wisconsin received more than 42% of the state-wide vote, and Republicans routinely held super-majority control of both chambers of the Legislature.

This was facilitated in the creation of the Democratic Organizing Committee, which brought together young liberals and former progressives, such as like Gaylord Nelson, James Edward Doyle, Horace W. Wilkie, and Fred A. Risser.

[13] Under the maps implemented by the Republican redistricting law (2011 Wisconsin Act 43) Democrats have not been able to win more than 43% of either the State Assembly or Senate.

With the state's legislative gerrymander looming large, the party focused on a strategy to replace the map and reform the redistricting process.

With no remaining hope of striking down the 2011 gerrymander, the party then turned its attention to the 2020 redistricting cycle, where state legislative Republicans would either have to make a deal with Governor Evers on a new map, or let the issue go back to the courts for a remedial solution.

Democrats sought relief in the federal district courts, which had handled redistricting in Wisconsin in 1982, 1992, and 2002, when the state had previously failed to reach a legislative compromise.

The legislative gerrymander was often discussed during the 2023 campaign, and after the election, Democrat-aligned groups promised to revisit the redistricting case in the state court.

Since the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, Wisconsin Democrats have prioritized fully expanding Medicaid in the state, a policy that Republicans have blocked.