Wisconsin's 3rd congressional district | |
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Representative | |
Area | 13,565.50 sq mi (35,134.5 km2) |
Distribution |
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Population (2023) | 739,552 |
Median household income | $69,286[1] |
Ethnicity |
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Cook PVI | R+4[3] |
Wisconsin's 3rd congressional district covers most of the Driftless Area in southwestern and western Wisconsin. The district includes the cities of Eau Claire, La Crosse, and Stevens Point, as well as many Wisconsin-based exurbs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It borders the states of Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Republican Derrick Van Orden has represented the district since 2023.
The political nature of the district is moderate, given its combination of an overall rural and suburban character counterbalanced by two significant urban centers (Eau Claire and La Crosse) and the Twin Cities suburbs. It historically elected moderate Republicans; before Ron Kind's 1996 victory, only two Democrats represented it in the 20th century. Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama all carried the district at the presidential level; it then narrowly voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 with slightly increased margins, as a result, the Cook Partisan Voting Index adjusted the district's partisan lean in 2021 from "even" to R+4.