Republican incumbents John Nygren and Jim Steineke were taking in the sights and sounds of Election Night at the watch party for Mike Gallagher.

Nygren, the 89^th District State Representative and Steineke, who is the 5^th District State Representative and Majority Leader Jim Steineke both won their races by a comfortable margin. As the preliminary results started to roll in, Nygren said the party had high expectations, but the night’s results exceeded anything they had imagined.

“I think there’s a lot of people that are pleasantly surprised by the results,” said Nygren. “You can always go into an election being very optimistic, but I think our expectations were high, but I think the results are exceeding our expectations this evening.”

Jim Steineke says the success came from a simple process: they listen to what the voters want to see implemented.

“We go door-to-door throughout our districts throughout the course of the summer, we take information from what our constituents tell us they want to see, and then once we win in November, we implement what they’ve asked us to do,” Steineke explained. “I think that’s why we’ve been so successful over the course of the last six years because we’re listening.”

With the top-down success of the Republican Party on Election Night, Steineke adds that regardless of how some may feel about President Elect Donald Trump, you can’t deny his message has resonated with voters.

“He has absolutely tapped into something that no politician has been able to do, over the course of my lifetime anyway. He’s really given the working man a voice, for whatever reason they didn’t feel like they had before, so it’s something we’re going to learn a lot of lessons from, I think.”

On top of that, Nygren believes the issues many voters face goes beyond some of Trump’s rhetoric. Voters have just become fed up with how the country’s current politicians are running things.

“There’s things that Donald Trump has said over the campaign that’s made me cringe a little bit, but I don’t think Donald Trump is the issue. I think the issue is there are a lot of people, especially in small town Wisconsin, small town USA, who are frustrated, disappointed with the direction the country is headed. [They] feel that nobody is listening to them at the national level, and I think that’s why you’re seeing the success that he’s having at the top of the ticket.”

Both Nygren and Steineke will maintain their District seats in the State Assembly. Nygren finished with 68 percent of the vote to defeat Heidi Fencl, while Steineke defeated Sam Kelly with 65 percent of the vote.