Trump Made Big Gains on Wisconsin’s College Campuses
2024 election data shows the youngest wards shifted strongly towards Republicans.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at Discovery World. Photo Taken Oct. 1, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.
President-elect Donald Trump flipped Wisconsin by narrowly increasing his margins across the state compared to 2020. But around some Wisconsin college campuses, his numbers grew by leaps and bounds.
The Republican president-elect made big gains in voting wards around universities, according to data compiled by Marquette University researcher John Johnson.
In a dozen wards around UW-Madison, Vice President Kamala Harris actually exceeded President Joe Biden’s winning margin from 2020. But voter turnout surged on both sides, helping Trump double his vote count from 2020 and cut into Democrats’ percentage leads by 12 points.
Trump more than doubled his vote count in seven student-populated wards around Marquette. He diminished Democrats’ winning margin there from 62 percent to 38 percent.
Johnson said changing ward boundaries forced him to approximate some 2020 vote counts using census data. He cautioned that the numbers may have a margin of error because of it.
But he said that sorting Wisconsin’s wards by age, and comparing Trump’s gains in those categories, supports the conclusion that college campuses shifted right.
“Now we have real numbers,” Johnson said. “And it does look like indeed the polling was correct.”
College Republicans credit economic concerns, outreach
Thomas Pyle, chair of the UW-Madison College Republicans, said his organization tabled on campus for weeks before the election.
He said they focused on “flipping the narrative that just because we’re going to lose Dane County, or we’re going to lose UW-Madison, doesn’t mean it’s not important to vote.”
“Students, so often here, are working in the service industry,” Pyle said. “So Trump’s ‘no tax on tips’ plan really spoke to them.”
Many UW-La Crosse students saw Trump as a better bet for future economic stability, too, according to Carter LeFevre-Tomlin, who restarted the school’s college GOP chapter last month.
“Some people that I’ve talked to are a little bit on edge — what’s going to happen when I graduate, when I have to repay my student loans, when I have to find a job, when I have to buy a house,” he said.
He said an incident where anti-abortion protestors were ejected from a Kamala Harris rally in La Crosse sparked calls for his GOP chapter’s formation.
“I think people were upset about that, and the fact that there was no other side, really,” he said.
College GOP activism strikes different tone from national discourse
Pyle grew up in Dane County. He told WPR he attended a private school where he was the “only Republican in my class” and was “consistently debating my peers over controversial political topics.”
He said political polarization is his “biggest thing,” and believes the GOP is a “good spot” to work on the issue. He tries to address it on campus.
“We’ve worked with College Democrats. We did a debate with them last spring, this fall we did a 9/11 event honoring veterans those we lost on 9/11, we tabled with them to register voters, and we honestly just get along really well with them,” he said.
“We kind of see at UW-Madison that we need to talk and we need to discuss these issues where we disagree on to create change,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll see more of that on the national perspective, but we’re trying to lead the charge here.”
He said an 80-person event with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde was his chapter’s largest since 2019. As for claims that an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast swayed young men’s vote towards Trump, Pyle said he thinks “the lack of the Rogan interview from the Harris side made a bigger impact.”
The UW-Madison College Republicans met with 2024 Senate candidate Eric Hovde. Photo courtesy of UW-Madison College Republicans
He said it “really affected a lot of voters who listen to him and wanted to hear from both candidates.”
According to national exit polls compiled by CNN, Trump made large gains with first-time voters and those between 18- and 29-years of age. NBC’s exit polls show that 49 percent of 18- to 29-year-old men voted for Trump, compared to 37 percent of women in the same age group.
Trump made big gains on Wisconsin’s college campuses in 2024 election was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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Much as it pains to admit it, this should not be surprising. President Biden’s student loan relief was too little too late. Most students are most informed enough to know Biden voted for the program’s that allowed private lenders into education lending without adequate controls on interest rates.
With all the economic headwinds young people face– student loans, housing costs, inflation– it’s understandable that they may be feeling unheard and turn toward the chaos candidate.
A significantly high percentage of these voters were likely voting for POTUS for the first time. That said, they didn’t have the total perspective as older voters with regard to his record the first time around, with the exception of how he chose not to manage the COVID crisis. They also are the people most likely to make their decisions based on what they see on social media.
It’s sad that the protection of our democracy from the voting booth has been reduced to this level of information dissemination and absorption.
Agreed. It didn’t help either that many ‘reputable’, ‘established’ media sources distorted the narrative in favor of their wealthy owners. It followed the playbook. Kick up enough dirt and distractions that people lose sight of the facts and never gain perspective.
Older voters’ perspective was formed during a time of saner, more factual, more truthful reporting. Younger ones experience are trying to form opinions during a time of superficial, opinionated, agenda-driven reporting.
It’s hard for me to not think the weather played a role here too. Fewer students coming out on election day due to afternoon rains across the state.
During the election, we were bombarded with talking heads in the media telling us that Trump was competitive based on many meaningless polls. Why weren’t college students who support Trump asked about how they would be better off with Trump as president. How would he lower prices on groceries and rent? What about his vile, racist attitudes towards minorities? Do they approve of his proposal to pardon January 6 convicts? These questions should also go for groups who wanted to support him who had traditionally supported Democrats?
I guess none of the college voters interviewed here were concerned about access to reproductive care, hm? And they don’t know that the president doesn’t set tax policy on his own. Nor did they understand that the fate of Palestinians will be so much worse under a Trump administration.
Listening to JoeRogan ain’t enough, kids.
JE Brown:
You won’t get any argument from me about anyone paying attention to Joe Rogan about most anything. I pray to God that our Democracy has not devolved to the point that a political endorsement for POTUS from a UFC commentator/game show host/pseudo-comedian carries any real weight with young voters. (Is it just me that sees the irony of one ex-game show host endorsing the presidential aspirations of another ex-reality/game show host?) You can’t make this crap up!
But I may be wrong, and the Joe Rogan’s of the world have become just another new tool in the toolbox for campaigns to figure out how to capitalize on. It seems the Democrats chose not to avail themselves of an opportunity to sit with JR and chose not to, fearing what conversational topics might be covered on his show. If that is true, Democrats need to take a hard look at their platform for 2028 and make damn sure that everything about it is transparent, that they stand behind it 100%, and are willing and able to defend it regardless of the forum in which they are doing so.
Regardless of those musings of mine, your points about reproductive care, tax policy and the Middle East are fabulous examples of why Frump cannot be allowed to eliminate the Department of Education…for obvious reasons.