Why Wisconsin’s voters are America's most valuable

Not all Americans’ votes are equal. And some have a way bigger impact than others.
Every four years, a small handful of swing states are bombarded with advertising, candidate visits and more when the country picks the next president, while a majority of other voters are mostly ignored. But even in the key swing states, some House contests, governor’s races and even legislative districts are far more competitive than others.
That’s why the nonpartisan nonprofit Power Moves is rolling out a new Voter Impact Index — the details of which were shared first with POLITICO — to help people take into account their voting power.
“We all learned in elementary school and middle school that every vote counts, and a vote is a vote,” said Heather Weston, one of the group’s co-founders. “But we kind of intuit that that’s not true. So what we really wanted people to understand is how geography really is connected to the impact of your vote.”
The project utilizes all of America’s 41,000-plus zip codes to measure how much of an impact a voter can have, something the organization’s co-founders say is unique to their product.
To get the “Voter Impact” score, which ranges from 0-100, Power Moves has a complex methodology. But in short, it weighs the competitiveness of recent elections in the zip code for six public offices, ranging from the presidency to legislative races — and the higher the score, the more competitive elections an American has the opportunity to vote in.
It weights some of those offices as more important than others. For example, the competitiveness of the presidential election, Senate seat and House district in a given zip code each get 25 percent of the score, while governor’s races get 15 percent and state House and Senate seats only get five percent each.
No individual zip code got either a zero or a 100, based on their methodology. But voters in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, zip code of 54703 came out on top with a score of 85. And most of Wyoming ties for the lowest score at 14. (Perhaps not coincidentally: The state with the highest statewide average is Wisconsin, and Wyoming is the lowest.)
With more than 40 million Americans moving each year — and some millions of college students moving to new states — the tool is aimed at helping people really understand where their vote can go the furthest.
People move for a variety of factors, and Power Moves emphasized that the tool is not supposed to be the only factor people weigh when deciding their new home. But as home-buying and renting tools like Zillow already factor things like walkability and school systems into their own algorithms, they hope voting can crack that list of priorities. Plus, because of the wonky ways district lines are drawn, apartments and houses that are just minutes apart can garner completely different voting scores.
“We really don’t care what your political stripes are,” said Charles Simon, another co-founder. “We just want to help everybody to understand their vote impact score and give them the opportunity to maximize that score.”
A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.