Tammy Baldwin looks to maintain edge over top of the ticket in battleground Wisconsin

CNN —

When Kamala Harris held her first campaign rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee last week, one of the most vulnerable senators in the country was on hand to welcome her.

Tammy Baldwin, the two-term Wisconsin Democrat, didn’t attend President Joe Biden’s post-debate rally in the state earlier this month. But her appearance with Harris signaled the new excitement Democrats are feeling from their base.

That enthusiasm will be key to helping the party defend one of the so-called blue wall states, where Biden won by half a point in 2020 and where Baldwin needs to win if Democrats are to have any shot at retaining their narrow Senate majority.

The US Capitol is seen from the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 8, 2024.

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But a reshaped presidential contest won’t change the calculus for Democrats in the most competitive Senate races – many of them in states former President Donald Trump won or narrowly lost in 2020. Baldwin isn’t nearly as endangered as her Democratic colleagues in Montana and Ohio, states Trump twice won big. But she will likely need to rely on some percentage of ticket-splitters to win, which even she has acknowledged may be harder than during her 2018 reelection race given the polarization of today’s politics.

“We are the battleground state,” Baldwin told the friendly crowd in Milwaukee on Tuesday before Harris took the stage.

Baldwin had spent the two days before Biden ended his reelection bid meeting with older Democrats in southwest Wisconsin, recording the “Pod Save America” podcast in Madison and shaking hands with voters at a fish festival in a conservative suburban county north