Can Wisconsin Republicans Retain Youth Vote in 2026 Election?

On a warm October night, around a dozen members of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls College Republicans began their monthly meeting in a small student center conference room. A projection of President Donald Trump at the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk shone brightly on a screen at one end of the room. Below Trump, in white block lettering, was the assignment.

“Icebreaker,” the caption read. “First EO (executive order) you would sign as President.”

The answers ran the gamut.

Ban the trading of stocks by members of Congress, said one student. Increase the amount of federal loans college students can take out, suggested another. There were calls to make the U.S. government officially recognize only male and female genders and to define Catholicism as the nation’s official religion. Mixed in was a joke about banning the import of Labubus, the popular, furry monster figurines.

The meeting agenda included information about political internships where students can earn college credit, but for the most part, they attend meetings like this because they like to.

Senior Isa Blett said she was transitioning out of her “center-left phase” when she got to UW-River Falls. She found a home in the Republican Party by watching videos of Charlie Kirk, the conservative founder of the group Turning Point USA who was assassinated on Sept. 10.

“I would see Turning Point shorts on YouTube and see this very kind guy who actually cared about his opponents and wanted to hear them out,” Blett said. “So, when he passed away, that was the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching moment of my life.”

These young Republicans say the world they grew up in formed their politics. Blett said people her age were shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, when they were “robbed” of the socializing experience of high school.

“We were expected to just get over it,” Blett said. “And in some way or another, it had lifelong effects on us.”

Senior Dylan Stryhn said he thinks the growth of social media and content from groups like Turning Point resonates with young men who are “feeling isolated.” The way Stryhn sees it, liberals are constantly attacking young men, “saying it’s all our fault, we all are the reason why the world sucks.”

Stryhn said he’d been thinking of moving away from politics. He said that changed when Kirk was assassinated.

“It kind of woke me up,” Stryhn said. “I realized that we can’t give up, and that the Lord doesn’t want us to give up.”

In 2024, Republicans made inroads with young voters

Kirk wasn’t the only conservative mobilizing college students during the 2024 presidential campaign, but he and Turning Point have been credited with having the largest and most effective operation at Wisconsin campuses. Those efforts contributed to notable rightward shifts at universities, which have long been considered among the safest Democratic strongholds.

Marquette University Law School Lubar Center Research Fellow John Johnson found that Trump’s share of the vote in wards surrounding college campuses improved by around three times the rate of Wisconsin as a whole in November. Around the Marquette campus, Trump’s vote share increased by around nine percentage points from 2020 to 2024.

“Quite a significant increase,” Johnson said.

Trump’s margins improved by around 9 percent at UW-La Crosse, too. Other UW campuses in Eau Claire, River Falls, Stevens Point, Oshkosh and Platteville saw Trump’s share grow by between 3 and 7 percent. Johnson said even in deep-blue Madison, Trump’s margin improved more in student-heavy wards than it did across the city as a whole.

“The state moved by just shy of 1 percentage point more of the vote going to Donald Trump in 2024 than four years prior, and it was about 4 percentage points more in the wards closest to the major college campuses in the state,” Johnson said. “So it’s real, and it’s happening among college students as well as non-college students.”

Longtime Republican strategist Bill McCoshen credits that shift in large part to Kirk and Turning Point, which he said had “more boots on the ground” than any other youth-focused organization in Wisconsin.

“Republicans lost their way, I would argue, by not competing on campuses hard enough over the course of the last 25 years,” McCoshen said. “It’s good to see that they’re competing again and moving the needle.”

Democrats split on how to respond

Among Democrats, there are different perspectives on what this surge means and how to address it.

College Democrats of Wisconsin Chair Evelyn Schmidt, a senior at UW-Whitewater, is among those who don’t see 2024’s rightward shift on campuses as cause for alarm.

She said despite Trump’s margins improving, the group’s data shows Wisconsin added “youth votes to the Democratic column.” She also noted that liberal college students helped reelect Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024.

“That tells me we did our job,” Schmidt said. “The problem was that the Republicans mobilized people who wouldn’t usually vote and would just stay home.”

For all the talk about Trump gaining ground with Gen Z on campuses, Schmidt said she’s skeptical it will last. During “data clearing weekends” this semester —where College Democrats members knock on students’ doors — Schmidt said they’ve heard some Trump voters say they don’t like some of his second term policies, like tariffs.

Schmidt views Turning Point like a lot of political action committees: “A sudden force that comes in and then leaves.” Meanwhile, Schmidt said, her group organizes year-round, following the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s model.

But longtime Wisconsin Democratic consultant Joe Zepecki said the Democratic Party is partly to blame for Trump’s gains among Gen Z. He said Trump, the Republican Party, Turning Point and other conservative groups have successfully worked “to exploit grievance in ways that we have never seen before.”

“Somewhere in that, they have managed to exploit the Democratic Party’s inability to connect with young men,” Zepecki said. “And it cost the Democratic Party in 2024 when we came up short in all of the battleground states.”

To some extent, he said, Republicans have a point.

“When young men wonder where their place is in the Democratic Party, and when Republicans exploit that, they have a point that the Democratic Party has become perceived as way more interested in working for groups other than young, particularly white men,” Zepecki said. “And that is a failure of communications and messaging that the Democrats need to fix.”

Trump has been a mainstay for Gen Z

Kirk’s rising influence coincided with Trump’s takeover and transformation of the Republican Party, which began when he announced his first run for president in 2015. For Generation Z, Trump has been a dominant public figure for much of their lives.

Nick Jacobs, the vice chair of the UW-River Falls College Republicans who also heads the Wisconsin Federation of College Republicans, said Trump’s message clicked for people his age.

“He was talking less about very minute economic policy, and he was talking broadly: ‘We’re going to come here and we’re going to make America great again,’” Jacobs said. “‘We’re going to give the coming generations the America that they deserve.’ And so, I think that totally changed the scene.”

In Trump’s Wisconsin victories, he’s shown a unique ability to mobilize people who lean conservative but aren’t regular voters, to turn out at the polls when he’s on the ballot. That’s proven to be a double-edged sword for Republicans in Wisconsin, however, as they’ve lost nearly all statewide elections during non-presidential years.

The most recent example came in April, when former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel unsuccessfully tried to sway those Trump voters to help him win a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. Schimel lost to now-Justice Susan Crawford, a liberal, by 10 percentage points.

When asked whether the conservative swing among Gen Z voters could be fleeting, Jacobs said he doesn’t think so. He noted Vice President JD Vance and “a lot of congressmen are taking on the more Trumpian style.”

“I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon,” Jacobs said. “I don’t think that Republicans, young Republicans especially, will vote for another Mitt Romney.”

2026 midterms will test youth vote

The first test of that staying power will be the November 2026 midterms, an election cycle that could be challenging for the GOP if history is any guide.

In Wisconsin, that will play out in a fight for control of the competitive 3rd Congressional District, which includes part of the UW-River Falls campus. And at the statewide level, all eyes will be on Wisconsin’s race for governor.

Among Republicans, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann announced his candidacy in May, and after much speculation, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany of Minocqua launched his campaign in late September.

At an event in the outskirts of Wausau to formally announce his candidacy, Tiffany’s campaign chose his surroundings carefully. He spoke in a spacious barn where string lights wrapped the wooden beams and rays of evening sunlight peeked through the boards. A massive American flag hung from the back wall. And as Tiffany spoke, he stood next to young people.

Some members of the College Republicans group made the drive for Tiffany’s launch, as did members of Turning Point and other young conservative groups from around Wisconsin. Blett stood right behind Tiffany on stage and appeared in his first campaign video.

As he spoke to reporters afterward, Tiffany was asked about Kirk’s impact on the conservative shift on college campuses and on young voters. He conceded that before Kirk was assassinated, people his age “didn’t have a full appreciation for what Charlie Kirk stood for.”

“But I’m telling you,” Tiffany said. “Amongst young people, he was an icon.

Tiffany said Kirk’s death “approaches martyrdom at this point” and is driving more young people to get politically active.

“It will be very interesting in 2026 to see the turnout we get on college campuses,” Tiffany said. “I can guarantee you, I will be on the college campuses.”

Charlie Kirk brought young voters to the GOP. Now they’re looking toward 2026. was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.