A Closer Look at the Campus Vote in Wisconsin
One of the clearest contributors to Trump’s 2024 presidential victory was his newfound support among young voters. Estimates vary, but all agree that, when considered by age, his support grew the most with voters under 30. According to Pew, Trump’s support grew by 4 percentage points among these voters; Catalist put his improvement at 6 points. In Wisconsin, I’ve calculated that Trump’s vote share grew by 3 percentage points in the youngest fifth of the state, while it grew just a single point in every older quintile.
College campus wards offer a useful way to measure a particular slice of the youth vote—students who’ve just entered the electorate. You might expect that Trump’s improvement with young voters was limited to young people who don’t go to college, given the way educational polarization works in the rest of the electorate. But this isn’t what the data show. Trump saw some particularly large gains on certain Wisconsin college campuses.
Democrats Benefit From Low Voter Turnout
Wisconsin votes a lot. I mean that in two ways: voter turnout is often high and opportunities to vote arrive frequently. In 2024, the state’s voter turnout was the highest in the nation (76.66% of eligible voters). And statewide elections occur almost every year, often more than once. The total number of voters participating in these contests routinely varies by millions, with inescapable consequences for the parties. With maximum turnout, Republicans enjoy a slight edge, but Democrats have opened a seemingly insurmountable advantage in lower-turnout contests.
For the purposes of this analysis, I’m interested in statewide elections when Democrats, or Democratic-endorsed nonpartisan candidates, ran against Republicans, or their endorsees. This includes November general elections, April elections for State Supreme Court Justice or State Superintendent, and February primaries for those same offices. Unlike in partisan primaries, when Democrats and Republicans vote in separate contests, nonpartisan Wisconsin primaries occur only when at least three candidates are on the ballot, and the top two vote-getters both advance to the April general.
These days, the nonpartisan status of statewide April (and February) elections is just a formality. The parties endorse and fund their preferred candidates, and the voters are well aware of even these unofficial candidate affiliations. The correlation between the vote for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice and the previous presidential election grew from 0.002 in 1978 to 0.99 by 2025.
Young Registered Voters are Far More Likely to Lack Age Data in L2’s Wisconsin Voter File
G. Elliot Morris argues that the polls in Wisconsin underestimated David Crowley’s support in the 2026 Democratic primary because they included too many young voters (who mostly supported Francesca Hong) and too few older voters (who mostly supported Crowley). Using the L2 voter file, he estimates that just 2-3% of a typical partisan primary’s electorate is composed of voters under 30. This analysis is incorrect because the L2 voter file is missing age data for nearly all of the youngest voters, while it includes age data for almost every older voter. Consequently, any estimate of voter participation relying on unaltered L2 age data vastly understates voting participation among young people, specifically.
David Crowley Wins an Upset with a Familiar Coalition Behind Him
Talk about a come-from-behind victory. David Crowley’s roughly 3,200-vote, 0.4-point victory in the Wisconsin Democratic primary came after every public poll—and Crowley’s own internal survey—showed him trailing Francesca Hong by double digits in the weeks preceding the election. The late-July Marquette poll, for instance, showed Hong drawing the support of 38%, followed by 16% for Mandela Barnes and 7% for Crowley. Thirty-four percent remained undecided in that poll.
Those undecided voters apparently broke heavily for Crowley, following Barnes’s exit from the race and high-profile endorsements from politicians like Congresswoman Gwen Moore. He wound up winning the race with roughly 39.8% of the vote to Hong’s 39.4%.
August Partisan Primary - a Closer Look
Wisconsin’s 2024 August partisan primary featured no competitive races for statewide office, but it did include many competitive legislative races and two referendums on proposed amendments to the state constitution. Both referendums, which were supported by the GOP and opposed by Democrats, failed. Legislative primaries around the state returned mixed signals about the strength of incumbency, experience, and candidate endorsements.
Statewide, the two almost identical referendum questions lost, with just over 57% of voters casting a “no” ballot for each measure. They failed by a similar margin (about 56% “no”) in the 4-county Milwaukee metro.
Besides the statewide referendums, each voter could also choose the partisan primary of their choice. The incentives to participate in a party’s primary can vary a lot from place to place, as sometimes only one party offers contested races. However, the balance of party participation in the August 2024 primary came fairly close to the balance of support for each party in the last November election.
How zoning reform could reverse population loss in many Milwaukee neighborhoods
Lots of people want to live in Washington Heights—the Milwaukee neighborhood sandwiched between Washington Park to the east and Wauwatosa to the west. The median home price grew by $92,000 (53%) from 2019 to 2023, nearly double the citywide increase of $48,000.[i] Average rents grew by 16% in the past two years alone, double the national increase of 8%.[ii]
Despite this, Washington Heights is shrinking. The neighborhood’s population fell from 7,200 in 2000 to 6,741 in 2010 and 6,360 in 2020. That is a 12% drop in 20 years.
The reasons are not complicated. The number of households has stayed about the same, but the average household size has fallen from 2.47 in 2000 to 2.36 in 2010 and 2.22 in 2020. Families are having fewer children, and more adults are living alone.
Imagine a typical block with 32 single-family homes (16 lots on each side of the street). In 2000, that block had 79 residents, it had 76 in 2010, and 71 in 2020. Across many blocks, these small changes add up quickly.
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Introducing the Lubar Center’s New Tool for Accessing Wisconsin Election Data
Past election results in Wisconsin aren’t always easy to find. Official, certified election results are spread across many different cumbersome Excel workbooks on multiple websites. And official statistics do not compile votes by municipalities.
To solve all of these problems, the Lubar Center has created a new online website, MULawPoll.org, which covers all presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races from 2000 through 2022. It also includes state legislative races from 2010-2022. The website will be updated with 2024 results once they have been certified.
The website includes a chapter for every county, featuring demographic data and sortable/filterable tables allowing deeper exploration of voting trends. A user can quickly answer questions like “How did the village of Cedarburg vote in past presidential elections?” or “How many Dane County municipalities voted for Tommy Thompson in 2012?” We also provide a table of election results aggregated by every municipality in the state, where municipalities that straddle county lines (like Wisconsin Dells) are presented as a single unit.