Wisconsin official wrong that Harris did worse than Biden in ‘every single county in America’

Kamala Harris campaigns for President in Wisconsin July 2024 — Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns for President as the presumptive Democratic candidate during an event July 23, 2024, in West Allis, Wis. (AP)

Republicans nationwide woke up feeling good last week as former President Donald Trump recaptured the White House, defeating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. (And for the third presidential contest in a row, Wisconsin played a crucial role.)

As analysts unpack these results in the coming days and weeks, expect to see them mull over why President Joe Biden was able to beat Trump in 2020, but Harris couldn’t match his numbers.

In Wisconsin, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester — who easily won reelection himself — suggested during a Nov. 6 news conference that it’s because Democrats nationally have taken key voting blocs for granted, and many of those voters this time chose Trump.

Exit polls and numbers show he may be right on that, but then he went too far, claiming, based on what he’d seen on television, that “every single county in America, every single county, Kamala Harris did worse than Joe Biden did.”

That might have been accurate at some point as results trickled in on election night, but it sure didn’t stay that way.

Let’s break it down.

Harris outperformed Biden in six Wisconsin counties

Vos’ office didn’t respond to a request for the evidence he used to make his claim.

It might have been a little tedious to identify where Harris outperformed or matched Biden across all of America’s 3,000-plus counties. For time’s sake, we’ll look just at Wisconsin.

There were six counties across the Badger State where Harris’ share of the vote this year was greater than Biden’s share of the vote in 2020, and two more in which their share of the vote was the same. Those include:

Brown County, where both Harris and Biden received 45.5% of the vote
Door County, where Harris received 50.6% of the vote to Biden’s 49.9%
Eau Claire County, where Harris received 54.5% of the vote to Biden’s 54.3%
Manitowoc County, where Harris received 37.6% of the vote to Biden’s 37.5%
Ozaukee County, where Harris received 43.9% of the vote to Biden’s 43.2%
Taylor County, where both Harris and Biden received 25.2% of the vote
Washington County, where Harris received 31.2% of the vote to Biden’s 30.2%
Waukesha County, where Harris received 39.3% of the vote to Biden’s 38.8%

There were some counties where Harris received more raw votes than Biden did in 2020, but a lower share of the vote total. That may have happened because of votes for third-party candidates, or because the county population grew in the last four years — such as in Dane County, in which Harris received almost 14,000 more votes than Biden, but captured 75.1% of the vote to Biden’s 75.7%.

As such, we’ll keep this analysis to counties where Harris’ vote share outperformed or matched Biden’s.

And while she only did so in eight out of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, that proves wrong Vos’ assertion that she did worse than Biden in “every single county in America.”

There are also other examples across the country — according to a Nov. 6 New York Times analysis, nationally, about 10% of counties had shifted more Democratic since 2020. (Some Western states were still counting votes then, too.)

Our ruling

Vos claimed that “every single county in America, every single county, Kamala Harris did worse than Joe Biden did.”

An analysis of the 2020 and 2024 election results in Wisconsin alone shows he’s wrong — Harris received a greater share of the vote than Biden did in six of 72 counties, and matched his share of the vote in two others.

We rate this claim False.

Truth-o-meter Ruling

False

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

An analysis of Wisconsin county election results in the 2020 and 2024 presidential races shows Vice President Kamala Harris got a greater share of the vote than President Joe Biden in six counties.
Harris also matched Biden’s share of the vote in two counties.
Although that’s only eight out of the state’s 72 counties, it proves wrong Vos’ statement that Harris did worse than Biden in "every single county in America."