WEST BEND - This community 40 miles northwest of Milwaukee has voted three times for Scott Walker by colossal margins.  

But in a special election for state Assembly last month, it did something almost unheard of.  

West Bend voted Democratic.

Was it a suburban alarm bell for the GOP?  Or a mere blip?

The battle for the suburbs is central to the 2018 election, thanks largely to President Donald Trump's weakness among college-educated voters. But roughly eight months out, the political signposts often seem in conflict with other.

Republicans can take hope from a growing economy and improving perceptions of the party's end-of-the-year federal tax cut.

But Democrats are buoyed by their strong performance in special elections around the country -- including in two Republican-leaning legislative districts in Wisconsin last month.   

"There are real forces that are quite discernible, but they are pointing in different directions," said Charles Franklin, professor and pollster for the Marquette Law School.

Signs abound that Trump is a political drag on his party among suburbanites, especially those with college degrees. 

But in Wisconsin, many of the same suburbs where Trump ran poorly in 2016 have a robust history of support for Gov. Scott Walker, who heads the GOP ticket this fall.

If you used Trump's performance as a guide, you would expect Republicans to struggle in these communities. If you used Walker's performance (and he's the one on the ballot), you'd expect them to flourish.  

Nowhere is that dichotomy sharper than in the state's biggest concentration of suburban votes, the conservative "WOW" counties north and west of Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington).  This is some of the most Republican turf in America.