By Gram Slattery

MOSINEE, Wisconsin (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump heads to Wisconsin, a battleground state that could decide the election, for a rally on Saturday as he tries to solidify support in a key part of his support base: working-class and rural whites.

The former president has seen his support erode among most demographic groups since his Democratic rival in the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, replaced President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket over the summer.

Trump is scheduled to speak at 1 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) in Mosinee, a town of about 4,500 people. The town is located near Wausau, a small city of about 40,000, but hours from the state’s major population centers, namely Milwaukee and Madison.

Marathon County, where Mosinee is located, used to be politically competitive, having voted for Democratic nominee Barack Obama in 2008. Since then, the county has veered right, having favored Trump in 2016 and 2020, both times by about 18 points.

Nationally, Harris is leading Trump among Hispanic voters by 13 percentage points, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted in August, while Biden led that demographic by just five points in May. She has also boosted her support among Black Americans, outperforming Biden by seven points among that demographic.

But she has barely moved the needle among white voters, those same polls show. Whites without a college degree, long the linchpin of Trump’s coalition, still favor the former president by 25 points, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. They favored Trump by 29 points when he was running against Biden.

That relative resilience among white voters represents an electoral bright spot for Trump, and several Trump advisers and allies have told Reuters in recent weeks that maintaining the former president’s margins within that demographic will be crucial if he is to defeat Harris.

That is especially true in the northern “Rust Belt” states, Wisconsin included, which skew white and have large rural populations. Trump relied heavily on these voters when he swept the Rust Belt’s swing states on the way to his 2016 victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Biden won the White House in 2020 in part by bringing some of these voters back into the Democratic Party.

While the Trump campaign has identified Hispanics and Black men as a key area of growth for the Republican Party, much of Trump’s campaigning in recent weeks has taken place in small cities and towns in the Rust Belt that are not diverse.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance, is expected to hit relatively rural areas of the Rust Belt particularly hard in the final weeks before the election, two Trump advisers told Reuters.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery, editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

The Wisconsin volleyball team needed five sets to break out of its slowest start since 1990.

And the Badgers needed to rally.

Down 2-1, to TCU, sixth-ranked UW dominated the fourth set and never trailed in the fifth to post a 25-15, 27-29, 21-25, 25-16, 15-11 victory over the Horned Frogs in a Big Ten/Big 12 Challenge match at the Ferrell Center on the campus of Baylor in Waco, Texas.

The win snapped a three-match losing streak to open the season.

Senior Sarah Franklin posted a team-high 18 kills and eight digs. Senior Devyn Robinson added 17 kills while hitting .381 and recording a team-high five blocks. Senior middle Caroline Crawford added 12 kills while hitting .400.

Freshman setter Charlie Fuerbringer recorded her second straight double-double (43 assists, 13 digs).

“I thought we played really clean, really good volleyball the first, fourth and fifth set,” Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield said. “We’ve got the ability to do some different things and figure things out as we’re going.”

The match was one of adjustments. Sheffield employed a 6-2 offense for a time in the third set, started senior Anna Smrek for the final two sets and used freshman Lola Schumacher as the team’s lone libero in the final two sets.

UW’s hitting percentage dipped to .049 in the third set, but it bounced back to hit .314 and .294 in the final two sets.

A 6-1 run that featured two kills by and three service points by Franklin helped give the Badgers control of the fourth set. Fuerbringer set the tone for the final set by opening with an ace and serving the first four points.

UW led by as many as six points in the final set and never trailed.

The Badgers continue the Big Ten/Big 12 Challenge against No. 23 Baylor at 7 p.m. Saturday.

WATERTOWN, Wis. — Democrats are setting their sights on a GOP stronghold district in Wisconsin this November — and they’re playing dirty to beat Rep. Bryan Steil, the Republican incumbent whose seat was once held by former Speaker of the House and VP candidate Paul Ryan.

A victory for Steil’s Democratic challenger Peter Barca, now the state’s Secretary of Revenue, would be an uphill battle in a district that has voted red for decades and has a Likely Republican rating in the Cook Political Report.

That long-shot status may be why the pol is slinging mud in a new campaign ad, attacking the Steil’s record on abortion and in-vitro fertilization.

In the 30 second spot, Barca claims Steil worked to “overturn Roe V. Wade,” a ruling made by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision, not Congress. The ad also says Steil supports “pregnancy surveillance” and restricting IVF.

Barca’s campaign did not respond to a request from The Post to define and provide sourcing for his assertions about Steil’s stances.

Whatever “pregnancy surveillance” is, Steil is not in favor, his campaign confirmed to The Post, adding that the ad is blatantly false.

The two-term congressman spoke to The Post after taking part in a Trump 47 policy panel in Milwaukee Thursday night.

“I support looking at ways to lower the cost of IVF for families. I’ve cosponsored legislation that looks at how we can use Health Savings Accounts as it relates to IVF,” Steil said when asked whether he supports Donald Trump’s free IVF policy.

“As a conservative, I support families and IVF is a way for many couples to be able to have a family. And sometimes it’s the only way. [That is] one of the key reasons we support IVF.”

Responding to questions from The Post about his positions on abortion, Steil pointed out that current law in Wisconsin restricts abortion to the first 20 weeks.

“Dobbs shifted [abortion] primarily to the states,” Steil added.

Barca voted against the Pain-Capable Abortion Act — a 20 week abortion ban — as the minority leader of the State Assembly in 2015.

Whereas Steil is open about his positions on abortion, Barca does not define his positions on the controversial topic for voters, such as whether abortions should be available through all nine months of pregnancy.

The “reproductive freedom” page on Barca’s campaign website says the candidate “believes a woman’s health care decisions are between herself and her doctor – not politicians.”

A June Marquette University Law Poll found that 66% of Wisconsin registered voters do not support legalizing abortion in all cases. Abortion was the third-rated issue for voters in the poll on deciding their vote in the election, after the economy and immigration.

“I myself come down on the side of life,” Steil told The Post. “I support reasonable exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother. It is the Democrats that are extreme on [abortion]. Peter Barca is always in line with extreme Democratic positions,”

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Steil tweeted, “Today’s decision will bring this important issue back to the states. This is a great victory for life.”

Barca received a lifetime grade of “A,” or 100%, from NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin in 2012 as the minority leader of the state assembly for supporting state funding for Planned Parenthood and opposing restrictions on abortion. Planned Parenthood, which opposes restrictions on abortion and supports public funding of abortions, has endorsed his race for Congress this November.

Barca’s campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment by time of publication.