At this point in election season, the political press starts making forays into the wilds of so-called Real America to try to find out what the voters are thinking. It can be an interesting exercise in the hands of journalists who have a feel for more than the usual “breakfast crowd at the diner” type of stories and find some insight that’s helpful to understand the cross-currents that shape the electorate in any particular cycle. All too often, however, it’s just a series of cliches and conventional wisdom, unfortunately.

We see tons of coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire, for obvious reasons. But when it comes to picking the brains of swing voters reporters always seem to head up to Wisconsin, the quintessential swing state. Back in 2020, just before the election, the New York Times sent a couple of reporters there to take the temperature of voters in the Badger State that former president Donald Trump barely won in 2016 to see what undecided swing voters were thinking four years later.