Barack Obama was barely three minutes into his speech inside a Madison, Wisconsin, area on Tuesday when he delivered his name to motion—“I’m asking you to vote”—a plea so eagerly anticipated by the hundreds in attendance that they erupted in cheers earlier than he might end the road.
Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign had dispatched its most beneficial surrogate to Wisconsin’s closely Democratic capital on the swing state’s first day of early voting, with simply two weeks to go till the election. Earlier than this crowd in Dane County, although, Obama’s exhortation—possibly even his complete look—appeared superfluous.
As Michael Wagner, a political scientist on the College of Wisconsin’s flagship Madison campus, put it: “Lots of people stay right here, and all people votes.” He was exaggerating, however solely barely.
Inside the battleground states that may decide the presidency, no metropolis seems its voters extra reliably than Madison, and no county seems extra reliably than Dane. 4 years in the past, a whopping 89 % of Dane’s registered voters solid ballots within the presidential election—nicely above the nationwide common—and greater than three-quarters of them went for Joe Biden. He obtained 42,000 extra votes within the county than Hillary Clinton had in 2016—and twice his statewide margin of victory. Harris may want much more. Within the scramble for each final vote in a deadlocked marketing campaign, the vice chairman is betting that she will beat Biden’s margins among the many white, college-educated suburbanites who’ve swung hardest towards the Democrats lately.
Together with Pennsylvania and Michigan, Wisconsin is considered one of three “Blue Wall” states that supply Harris’s easiest path to 270 electoral votes, and up to date polls have it basically tied. That’s not uncommon: Solely twice this century has a presidential candidate of both celebration carried Wisconsin by greater than a single share level.
To win Wisconsin, Harris possible has to end up new voters from Madison and Dane to offset probably steeper Democratic losses within the state’s rural areas, in addition to a possible dropoff amongst Black and Latino voters in Milwaukee. Republicans are gunning for the world, too; Donald Trump held a rally close to Madison earlier this month, and regardless of the Democrats’ dominance in Dane, the state’s second-most-populous county can also be residence to considered one of Wisconsin’s largest teams of GOP voters.
However Democrats nonetheless have a a lot greater ceiling in Dane. The county is the fastest-growing within the state, because of increasing native well being and tech sectors. Dane’s inhabitants has grown by 50,000 because the 2020 census, the county’s Democratic Social gathering chair, Alexia Sabor, advised me. “The brand new development is extra prone to be youthful, extra prone to be college-educated, and extra prone to be at the least middle-class,” she mentioned. “That each one correlates with Democratic votership.”
Sturdy turnout in Madison and Dane helped progressives flip a pivotal state Supreme Courtroom seat in a particular election final yr. In August, Madison set a 40-year voting file for a summer season main, and Dane County solid extra ballots than Milwaukee County, which has practically double Dane’s inhabitants. Enthusiasm has solely elevated within the months since. The state celebration requested the Dane Democrats to knock on 100,000 doorways by November—a objective they achieved earlier than the top of September. Sabor’s workplace obtained so many emailed requests for garden indicators that she needed to arrange an auto-reply message.
A few hours earlier than the Obama rally, which additionally featured Harris’s working mate, Tim Walz, I met Sabor at a espresso store throughout the road from an early-voting web site in Madison. Neither of us might discover parking, as a result of so many individuals had confirmed up even earlier than the polls opened. Sabor mentioned she wouldn’t be going to the rally. Her time was higher spent elsewhere, she advised me: “There are extra doorways to knock.”
Chris Sinicki has a harder job than Sabor. She’s the Democratic chair in Milwaukee County, whose eponymous metropolis has been dropping inhabitants and the place enthusiasm for Harris is a a lot bigger concern than in Dane. In 2008, turnout amongst Black voters in Milwaukee helped propel Obama to the largest presidential landslide in half a century in Wisconsin—he received the state by 14 factors. Black turnout stayed excessive for his reelection in 2012 however has fallen off since.
Nonetheless, Sinicki was upbeat once we spoke—at the least at first. The joy amongst Democrats was “off the charts,” she advised me. “I’m feeling actually optimistic.” However after I requested her why the Harris marketing campaign had despatched Obama and Walz to Madison relatively than Milwaukee, her tone modified. “Madison doesn’t want the GOTV stuff. They vote in excessive numbers,” Sinicki mentioned. “We want that sort of muscle right here in Milwaukee. We want large rallies.”
She wasn’t alone in questioning the choice. Just a few Democrats I met on the rally, though they have been excited to see Obama, questioned why he was there. “It was an fascinating political transfer,” Dakota Corridor, the Milwaukee-based govt director of the Alliance for Youth Motion, a progressive political group, advised me once we met within the metropolis the following day. “I don’t suppose we’d like Obama to go rally Madison as a lot as we would have liked him to rally Milwaukee voters.”
The Harris marketing campaign says it hasn’t dominated out sending Obama to Milwaukee within the closing days of the race. It pointed to much less notable surrogates who’ve campaigned for Harris within the metropolis, together with the actors Kerry Washington and Wendell Pierce, in addition to Doc Rivers, the pinnacle coach of the Milwaukee Bucks. On Friday, nonetheless, the marketing campaign introduced that Harris would return to Wisconsin subsequent week—for a rally in Madison.
Wisconsin Democrats stay bitter about 2016. Hillary Clinton spent essential time within the remaining weeks campaigning in states she would go on to lose by a number of factors—together with Arizona, Ohio, and Iowa—and didn’t step foot in Wisconsin, which she misplaced to Trump by 22,000 votes. However they haven’t any such complaints about Harris. The vice chairman has campaigned closely throughout Wisconsin; earlier this month she visited the small cities of La Crosse and Inexperienced Bay. The evening earlier than Obama’s Madison rally, she held a city corridor with former Consultant Liz Cheney in Waukesha, a GOP stronghold the place Harris is hoping to win over Republicans who’ve turned away from Trump. Waukesha’s Republican mayor endorsed the vice chairman just a few days later.
“In Wisconsin, you solely win with an all-of-the-above technique,” Ben Wikler, the state Democratic chair, advised me in Madison. “We want each Democrat to end up. We want nonvoters to vote for Harris-Walz, and we have to convey some Republicans.”
Though Madison scored Obama, the Harris marketing campaign is giving loads of like to Milwaukee as nicely. The vice chairman held an 18,000-person rally within the metropolis in August—on the identical area the place Republicans had convened to appoint Trump just a few weeks earlier—which till final week had been the most important of her marketing campaign. She returned for a smaller occasion this month, and despatched her husband, Doug Emhoff, to marketing campaign within the metropolis on Thursday.
“That is very completely different from 2016,” Gwen Moore, Milwaukee’s consultant in Congress, advised a small group of reporters close to an early-voting web site on Wednesday. “We’re very pleased.”
Moore appeared alongside two different distinguished Black Democrats—Milwaukee’s mayor, Cavalier Johnson, and its county govt, David Crowley—who tailor-made their messages to residents who may be disinclined to vote. “Whilst you won’t be into politics, politics is into you,” Johnson mentioned. “There are such a lot of people who find themselves counting Milwaukee out.”
Corridor, the progressive activist, credited the Harris marketing campaign for listening to Milwaukee. However he apprehensive that the vice chairman’s truncated candidacy and the shortage of a full Democratic main marketing campaign had left much less engaged residents—particularly youthful Black and Latino males—uncertain what she would do as president. “Folks want to listen to extra concrete particulars,” he advised me. “You’ve got a candidate who, for essentially the most half, is unknown to youthful voters.”
In Milwaukee, Harris’s problem just isn’t solely mobilizing Black folks to end up, however persuading them to vote for her. Polls throughout the nation have proven Trump profitable a better share of Black voters than previously, a pattern that’s concentrated amongst younger males. With an eye fixed on that constituency, Trump is planning a big rally in Milwaukee later this week. “I don’t know that we realistically count on her to get extra of the male vote” than Biden did, Moore advised me. “There are Black people who find themselves Republican, and we settle for that, interval.” She mentioned that the various detrimental advertisements Republicans are working in opposition to Harris have possible turned off a portion of Black males. “What’s extra possible is that they received’t come out to vote in any respect,” Moore mentioned.
Behind Moore, dozens of voters—most of them Black—stood in a line that snaked outdoors the polling place for the second day in a row. The turnout delighted Democratic officers, and the majority of the voters I interviewed mentioned they have been voting for Harris. However not all. Michael and Mark Ferguson, 44-year-old twin brothers, advised me they’d backed Biden 4 years in the past however have been firmly behind Trump this time.
Michael, a correctional officer, mentioned his high points have been immigration and the economic system. “I don’t consider Kamala Harris is a powerful chief,” he advised me. “She acquired each appointment handed to her. She didn’t earn it.” A president who’s afraid to go on Fox Information, Ferguson mentioned, couldn’t be trusted to cope with robust overseas leaders. I identified that Harris had not too long ago sat for a Fox interview. “Yeah,” he replied, “and he or she stunk it up.”
To attempt to compensate for the defections of onetime Democrats just like the Fergusons, the Harris marketing campaign is seeking to Dane County. Along with the hundreds of largely Democratic voters who’ve not too long ago moved in, there are the practically 40,000 undergraduates on the College of Wisconsin at Madison, who lean left and vote at a lot greater charges than the nationwide common for college-age residents, and at greater charges than their Massive Ten (and swing-state) rivals in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Because of Wisconsin’s same-day voter registration, out-of-state college students can simply solid ballots quickly after they transfer to Madison. In just a few small wards close to campus in 2020, voter turnout exceeded 100% as a result of extra folks voted than had beforehand been listed as registered. Many different precincts reported turnout exceeding 90 % that yr. (Officers in Madison and Dane report turnout as a share of registered voters, a smaller pool than the voting-age inhabitants utilized by political scientists; by both yardstick, turnout within the space significantly surpasses the nationwide and state averages.)
A big contingent of UW Madison college students attended the Obama rally. I met a bunch of three 20-year-olds who grew up in blue states however deliberate to solid their first votes—for Harris—in Wisconsin. Not all of their buddies have been doing the identical. “Trump has a maintain over our age group and demographic greater than I anticipated,” Owen Kolbrenner of California advised me. Trump’s unseriousness appealed to some guys they knew. “A few of our buddies suppose the entire thing is a joke,” Kolbrenner mentioned. “It’s sort of inconceivable to rationalize with them.”
Throughout his speech, Obama advised the group, “I received’t be offended should you simply stroll out proper now. Go vote!” No person took him up on the supply, however after he left the stage, some attendees headed straight for an early-voting web site on campus, the place the road stretched by way of a number of rooms. Throughout Wisconsin that day, officers mentioned excessive turnout strained the state’s election system and precipitated slowdowns in printing poll envelopes. In Madison, much more folks voted the following day, and by midweek, town had practically matched the totals in Milwaukee, its a lot bigger neighbor. On the college’s pupil union, Khadija Sene, a lifelong Madison resident, was standing consistent with her household, ready to solid her first-ever poll for Harris. She advised me, “Everyone that I do know is voting.”
