That pattern appears to be nationwide, and nobody has capitalized on that pattern more than Scott Walker. He won two elections in non-presidential election years and in both cases the turnout was about 2.3 million. He won his recall with a voter turnout of about 2.5 million. In the 2012 election the voter turnout was over 3 million and Obama took Wisconsin by 8 percentage points with Paul Ryan on the ticket. Nothing seems to bring the Dems out like a presidential race, and if Scott Walker is the nominee there is no guarantee he'll carry his home state.
Of course not. No guarantee. And MR could not even make a dent in MA or MI for that matter. Some states seem to be really solid blue. It always comes down to about a handful of swing states, most notably OH, FL, VA, NV, CO, IA, NM, NH. In order for the GOP to win the presidency they must really run the tables on these states, unless a way can be found to pick off some the states that have been voting reliably blue since in 1992. In recent years the GOP has been able to pick up WV, MO, KY, AR, LA, TN, as fairly reliable presidential states. But that’s more than offset by the loss of CA (which was reliably GOP from 1952 to 1992) and the loss of New England and much of the Midwest which used to be at the heart of the GOP base in the not too distant past.