Hillary Clinton never campaigned in swing-state Wisconsin in 2016. Kamala Harris isn’t making that mistake.

However, a key goal for the Harris campaign is to strengthen her standing in Wisconsin. If Harris can recreate former President Barack Obama’s formula of boosting Democratic turnout in Milwaukee and Madison, while also appealing to union workers, suburbanites, and rural swing voters, she’ll be well on her way to winning the Midwestern state.

Since Harris’ campaign launched in July, she’s visited Wisconsin three times, which included her most recent appearance in Milwaukee. And on Tuesday, she took advantage of the city’s proximity to Chicago to boost her visibility beyond the confines of the Democratic convention.

Democrats haven’t forgotten about 2016

When Trump formally entered the political scene, his campaign zeroed in on working-class voters who backed Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Trump in 2016 succeeded in peeling off just enough voters to deny Clinton victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which essentially cut off her path to the White House as she also lost Sun Belt states like Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.

Clinton’s campaign eight years ago had no issue touting the historic nature of her candidacy as potentially the first-ever female US president. But Harris has seemingly reflected less on that “first” and has focused squarely on the politics of the moment as she leads a new ticket following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 race.

In 2016, Clinton lost to Trump by a 0.77% margin, or by roughly 23,000 votes out of nearly 3 million ballots cast.

Four years later, Biden defeated Trump by a 0.63% margin, with about 21,000 votes separating the two men and nearly 3.3 million ballots cast statewide in the presidential race.

With these razor-thin margins in mind, Harris is looking for every vote that she can get in Wisconsin. And Trump isn’t far behind.