In a state where elections turn on 10,000-30,000 votes, every vote really matters.

One county stands out dramatically in Wisconsin vote totals, wildly swinging toward Democrats by a huge margin. It’s not only Milwaukee or Dane. The latter are the Democrat counties that tend to dominate the political conversation, of course. To be sure, they’re far more populous.

But Menominee County’s dramatic Democratic tilt is something to behold. It’s also almost entirely the home of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin’s reservation. The vote totals, in election-after-election, go sky high for Democrats, even as at least one other tribe (the Potawatomi) has started to tilt Republican, at least when it comes to donations. Nationwide, polling has found that Native Americans are more likely to vote Republican than blacks or Hispanics, although less so than whites. But in Menominee County, about 8 out of 10 people vote Democrat.

Consider: In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris received 68.3% of the Milwaukee County vote and 75.1% of the Dane County vote. But she received 80.5% of the Menominee County vote. It was the #1 county for Harris by percentage of the vote – by far. In a state with elections that can turn on 10,000 to 30,000 votes, paying attention to the Native American vote could matter.

The small county of Menominee (population only about 4,100 people) is the bluest Wisconsin county of them all, so blue that it’s considered a bellwether county nationally. It’s tough to tease out the Native American vote elsewhere in Wisconsin and across the U.S. because the reservation and county lines don’t so neatly match like they do with Menominee County and the Menominee reservation, which are almost one and the same. However, one analysis did find that Native Americans statewide also wildly went for Biden.

In 2020, Joe Biden did even better in Menominee County than Harris, pulling in a whopping 81.9% of the vote, by far the highest Democratic vote percentage in Wisconsin. Although the numbers aren’t large, overall, Native News Online believes the Wisconsin indigenous vote may have handed the state to Biden.

“There is no other county in the state of Wisconsin that is a reservation, the entire thing, so that’s why Menominee is always the bellwether [for the Native American vote],” said Burton Warrington, president of Indian Ave. Group (AIG), to Native News Online.

Check out these vote totals. Donald Trump earned just 9.5% of the vote in Menominee County in 2024. In election after election, the Republican gets pummeled. Menominee County and the Menominee reservation “share nearly identical boundaries, with the area known as Middle Village being the exception. The size of the reservation is 235,524 acres or approximately 357.96 square miles, and contains roughly 223,500 acres of heavily forested lands, representing the largest single tract of virgin timberland in Wisconsin,” according to DPI.

Scott Walker and JB Van Hollen fared best among Republicans in Menominee County in recent years, but they still were destroyed there.

Menominee county is 84 percent Native American, according to Ballotpedia.

Why this could matter: Voter turnout is up in indigenous communities.

In Contrast, the Forest County Potawatomi Tribe Was a Top Donor to Republicans

However, it’s a mistake to think that all Native American tribes are the same when it comes to political tilt. For example, the Trump administration chose Potawatomi Chairman James Crawford to serve in the U.S. Department of Transportation. According to Tribal Business News, he was “only the second Native American to hold this high-level federal position.”

According to U.S. News, in 2024, the Forest County Potawatomi tribe was the number 4 highest donor to Republicans in Wisconsin. The tribe gave more than $1 million to Republicans and just $3,300 to Democrats, that article reported. That’s a change; the Potawatomi “have donated in federal elections for years, but the 2024 cycle marks their most active, and the first time donations associated with the tribe were higher for Republicans than Democrats,” U.S. News added.

That change may be good news for Republicans if it translates into vote totals. In 2020, Warrington “found that averaging the results of the vote of all the major Native American-populated wards in Wisconsin resulted in an average of 82 percent for Biden and 18 percent for Trump, which happened to be the same as the results in Menominee County,” according to Native News Online.

“It is difficult to determine what the voting preference was of residents located in the area now known as Menominee County prior to 1961, though it was likely Democratic,” Jeremy C. Weso, Administrative Coordinator for Menominee County, told Native News Online.

It’s not possible to use Forest County as a direct barometer of the Potawatomi vote, in contrast to Menominee County, because the reservation only makes up a small portion of it, and only 14.5% of the county’s population is Native American. However, all the same, Forest County did go wildly for Trump in 2024.

The Menominee don’t give much to federal candidates, but the donations that do exist tend to be Democratic.

Similarly, the Ho-Chunk nation isn’t consolidated on a reservation in one county, like the Menominee. “The Ho-Chunk Nation is not located on a reservation or a single continuous land base in Wisconsin. The Ho-Chunk Nation owns land in 14 counties in Wisconsin, including Adams, Clark, Crawford, Dane, Eau Claire, Jackson, Juneau, La Crosse, Marathon, Monroe, Sauk, Shawano, Vernon and Wood Counties, and also land in the State of Illinois,” according to Wisconsin First Nations.

There are Reddit threads devoted to analyzing why some Native Americans vote Republican and/or for Trump. “A majority of my Native American family voted red. It’s largely tied to a ‘leave me be’ attitude (I.e., less government intervention because they don’t trust them),” wrote one person, also citing poverty. “A large number of elders are very conservative,” added another Reddit user. “Should be a wake up for the liberal elite,” wrote another person. There is also a strong respect for veterans in Native communities.

Indigenous Voter Turnout Is Up

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last year that “indigenous voter turnout has risen sharply in Wisconsin.” That article estimated that the number of Wisconsin Native voters is about 71,000. According to the Badger Herald, “a tribal ID does qualify as a form of voter ID.”

It’s worth noting that Bayfield and Ashland counties also went blue; they have reservations consisting of different Ojibwe bands, although those counties only have about 8-9% of their vote totals being Native.

In Menominee County, only 7 percent of voter registrations are conducted online, compared to 70 percent for the state overall, according to The Badger Herald.

According to the Wisconsin Conservation Voters, “voter turnout between 2023 and the 2025 Supreme Court Election increased 63 percent in Red Cliff, 63 percent in Bad River, and 81 percent in Menominee. For the Menominee Nation, that is a 220 percent increase between 2019 and 2025,” according to Native News Online.

Community dinners were among voter turnout efforts. According to Influence Watch, “Although Wisconsin Native Vote claims it is nonpartisan, its leadership has connections to left-of-center environmentalist causes and Democratic politicians.” That group is a voter turnout effort by Wisconsin Conservation Voters. “Wisconsin Conservation Voices has publicly supported President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar American Jobs Plan…Wisconsin Native Vote began in 2011, formed out of a partnership between Wisconsin Conservation Voices and the Bad River Band, a tribe of the Chippewa Nation.”

Thus, it appears that Democratic interests are well aware of the liberal tilt of some reservations and are working them hard.

What About Nationwide?

Menominee County is even out of step with some Native American vote patterns overall. Native American support for Republicans or Trump can be tough to measure; the Marquette University Law School poll, which is the most commonly cited poll in the state, sometimes only lists white, black, Hispanic and other under ethnicity.

A 2024 exit poll conducted by NBC News found Native Americans supported Trump, but it has been criticized.

In other nationwide polling, reported by the center-left Brookings Institute, “57% of Native American voters supported Vice President Harris in the presidential race in 2024, compared to 39% who supported President-elect Trump.” Although that is also a pro-Democrat tilt, Native American voters “were more likely to vote for Trump than Black, Asian American, or Latino voters,” Brookings.edu reported, although they were more likely to vote for Harris than white voters.

As with other groups, Native American men were more likely to support Trump than Native American women: “63% of Native American women reported voting for Harris compared to 50% of Native American men.”