The University of Wisconsin Law School, in conjunction with other organizations, is hosting what looks like will be a great event. Parties, Power, and Possibility: Revisiting Fusion Voting in Wisconsin will be held on Friday, November 14, 2025. It has a superb lineup of participants:
- Nathan Atkinson, University of Wisconsin Law School
- Julia Azari, Marquette University
- Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin, Elections Research Center
- Dan Cantor, Center for Ballot Freedom
- Andy Craig, Rainey Center
- David G. Deininger, Former Wisconsin Court of Appeals
- Daniel DiSalvo, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Lisa Disch, University of Michigan
- Jennifer Dresden, Protect Democracy
- Lee Drutman, New America
- Peter LaVenia Jr., SUNY Oneonta
- Dan Lee, University of Nevada – Las Vegas
- Seth Masket, University of Denver
- Allie Morris, University of Wisconsin
- Derek Muller, University of Notre Dame Law School
- Alexander Tahk, Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership
- Dan Tokaji, University of Wisconsin Law School
- Beau Tremitiere, Protect Democracy
If the goal of fusion voting is to counteract polarization and the election of more extreme candidates, I’m personally skeptical of its potential to achieve those benefits–at least in a state like Ohio, with which I’m most familiar. For example, I don’t think fusion voting would have made a difference in Ohio’s US Senate elections in either 2022 or 2024. In other words, even if Tim Ryan in 2022 and Sherrod Brown in 2024 had appeared on the ballot as the nominee of a “moderate” party as well as being a Democrat, I doubt that the outcome of either election would have been any different. In each case, the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee (Vance in 2022, Moreno in 2024) still most likely would have won in my judgment.
But Wisconsin is a different state than Ohio, purple instead of red. It seems more likely that fusion voting might have made a difference in Wisconsin’s 2022 US Senate election. Ron Johnson won that race by only one percentage point, 50.41% to 49.41%, and Mandela Barnes, the Democrat. If Barnes had been co-nominated by a “moderate” party, that might have been enough to cause him to pull ahead of Johnson.
In any event, I think it’s great that there is a Wisconsin-specific conference focusing on the possibility of fusion voting in that state. I’ll be especially interested to hear if any empirical data is presented at the conference to shed light on what potentially effect it actually would have.