PEWAUKEE, Wis. — Katrina Goetz is fully invested in her community. A wife, mother of three and volunteer, she is also an executive overseeing 65 employees at TLX Technologies in suburban Milwaukee. And yet, in 2016, she did something she’d never done before in her adult life: She refused to vote for president.

Goetz did go to the polls, choosing a candidate for every office on her ballot except the highest one in the land. Though she says she has always voted for Republican candidates since she was 18, she found Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric too off-putting to pull the lever for him.

“I went to the election. I chose not to vote for president. I signed the everybody sucks campaign,” she deadpans.

But in the years that followed, Goetz, 40, has gradually moved from “never Trump” to “probably Trump” for two reasons: 1) She says she likes the results of the president’s economic policies, which have resulted in Wisconsin’s low unemployment rate at 3.3 percent; and 2) She says the current field of Democratic presidential candidates hasn’t persuaded her to choose any of them.

“The platform that they all seem to be running on is, ‘Well, I’m not Trump.’ And it’s like, that’s not winning me,” she said.

“Given all of the known factors right now,” she added, “I would lean towards voting for Trump.”

While a single person does not a trend make, Goetz shows that the Democrats have failed to connect with one voter who falls into one of their target audiences: an educated, suburban woman who is repulsed by Trump’s demeanor.

Trump beat Hillary Clinton by just 22,000 votes in Wisconsin — giving him the second smallest margin of any state that voted for him. (Michigan’s margin was the tiniest with just 10,704 votes.) Neither party can afford to lose any voter in the Great Lakes states, and especially not here in Wisconsin or in Michigan or even Pennsylvania.

“We stand right at the pivot point as the state that could push one candidate or the other across the Electoral College finish line,” said Charles Franklin, political science professor and renowned Marquette University Law School pollster. A win in Wisconsin translates to 10 Electoral College votes, while Michigan has 16 and Pennsylvania 20.

And, according to the latest poll by Marquette University, Wisconsin voters are warming to Trump. In January 2019, 44 percent gave the president a positive job-approval rating; by January 2020, that number had grown to 48 percent. In theoretical matchups with the leading Democratic candidates, only Joe Biden (49 percent) currently bests Trump (45 percent) in Wisconsin.

“His job approval has inched up over the course of the last 12 months, and [his disapproval rating] has worked its way down from 53 to 49 percent,” said Franklin.

And when it comes to the impeachment proceedings in the Senate, more Wisconsin respondents are in favor of acquittal (49 percent) than removal (44 percent).

There’s a reason the Democrats chose Milwaukee as the venue for their nominating convention in July, planting a symbolic flag in the state they hope to wrest back from Trump.

Trump, meanwhile, has made the Badger State a favorite rally stop. As the latest Democratic debate was unfolding in Iowa on Jan. 14, Trump fired up Milwaukee crowds with talk of his strike on Iran’s Qassem Soleimani — and the inefficiency of new dishwashers and light bulbs.

While many critics found Trump’s pivoting between foreign policy and household goods absurd, Kathleen Grissom — a self-described Trump “super-supporter” who live-streamed the rally at home — said his riffs are partly humorous, partly on point about the little things that matter to voters.

As a landlord managing 27 units, Grissom said Trump’s comments on light bulbs struck home for her.

“I totally agreed with him. I have to purchase so many bulbs for my units — what, at $6 a pop? Give me a break. They say good for 13-plus years [but it] is so untrue,” said the 58-year-old Kenosha resident.

One day after the rally, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted out data gathered from people who registered for the Milwaukee event: Of the 20,395 registered, 15,738 said they were voters from Wisconsin, 57.9 percent said they were not Republican and 4,313 said they didn’t vote in 2016.

Some of those 4,313 nonvoters will be people just like Goetz, who didn’t like either candidate four years ago, but have since edged toward Trump. And these voters could make the difference not just for Wisconsin, but the entire nation.

Salena Zito is the author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” (Crown Forum), out now.