'This Is a Really Big Deal': How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP

[BeckyDem]

By CHARLIE MAHTESIAN and MADI ALEXANDER

07/21/2023 04:30 AM EDT

MADISON, Wisconsin — Spring elections in Wisconsin are typically low turnout affairs, but in April, with the nation watching the state’s bitterly contested Supreme Court race, voters turned out in record-breaking numbers.

No place was more energized to vote than Dane County, the state’s second-most populous county after Milwaukee. It’s long been a progressive stronghold thanks to the double influence of Madison, the state capital, and the University of Wisconsin, but this was something else. Turnout in Dane was higher than anywhere else in the state. And the Democratic margin of victory that delivered control of the nonpartisan court to liberals was even more lopsided than usual — and bigger than in any of the state’s other 71 counties.

The margin was so big it that it changed the state’s electoral formula. Under the state’s traditional political math, Milwaukee and Dane — Wisconsin’s two Democratic strongholds — are counterbalanced by the populous Republican suburbs surrounding Milwaukee. The rest of the state typically delivers the decisive margin in statewide races. The Supreme Court results blew up that model. Dane County alone is now so dominant that it overwhelms the Milwaukee suburbs (which have begun trending leftward anyway). In effect, Dane has become a Republican-killing Death Star.


“This is a really big deal,” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign in Wisconsin. “What Democrats are doing in Dane County is truly making it impossible for Republicans to win a statewide race.”


https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/gop-college-towns-00106974


( I love good news. Happy Friday, everyone. )

[Kid Berwyn]

1. "A Republican-killing Death Star"

Has a nice ring to it.

Go Wisco!

[calimary]

31. Could they replicate this in other red states?

Maybe even just one or two more?

[catbyte]

2. Maybe now they'll be able to get rid of Ron "Putin Asset" Johnson next time he's up for re-election.

Hope springs eternal from your neighbor across Lake Michigan.

[liberalla]

14. Wouldn't that be fantastic! YES!

Please, please, please!

[Sky Jewels]

17. Fingers crossed that that asshole gets some sort of punishment

for participating in an attempted coup d'etat.

[maxsolomon]

19. that would be 2028.

2028 is a long way off. until then, WI owns that shame.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. GOP trying to stop college kids from being able to vote

College kids live 9 months of the year on or near campus, GOP wants them to have to go back home to vote. It's ridiculous.

Right Wingers have been trying to stop college students from voting for decades. Even locally. In the college town I lived in, all the local elections were held right in the middle of Summer in order to minimize the student vote controlling who the local elected officials were.

[Old Crank]

11. Tennessee, just reading in the Atlantic

They have mail in voting but first time voters must vote in person. A direct attack on college students who leave the state or move to another part of the state for school.

[sybylla]

30. If/when this happens, colleges should have a long weekend break over election day.

Let all those kids go home and unelect those GQP mofos in their own districts. That works for me, too.

[Johnny2X2X]

33. Needs to be a Federal Holliday

Every 2 years, the First Tuesday in November should be a Federal holliday. No one should have to miss voting becuase they're got to work or go to school.

[Retrograde]

42. What about the people who need to work on holidays?

Hospital workers, bus drivers and other transit workers, emergency workers, home care givers? Their work can't just be put on hold for a day.* And will transit systems run on holiday schedules, making it harder for people who depend on them to get to their polling place? And what about students who live far away from where they go to school? The cost of going back for one day can be prohibitively expensive.

The better solution is to provide a reasonable early voting period - and not just at the county registrar's office - and no-excuse mail voting.

*That's not even mentioning the people who think: Tuesday's a holiday, so I'll just take Monday off as well and have a four day weekend.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

43. We could be more creative and flexible about the holiday

I don't know of many states that don't have early voting, so make it possible for companies to let shift workers take a day off during the early voting period, maybe the week before, to keep things reasonable for employers and workers. They get paid the day off at the time, then work on election day as needed.

I realize most places comp a holiday worked to a later time, but this could be an exception required under the law.

Was that so difficult?

[Greybnk48]

4. I want to recommend this a million times!

Go UW-Madison (my alma mater) and Go Dane County!

[BeckyDem]

5. I think it's exciting too!

[CrispyQ]

6. College kids did it in the 60s, they can do it again.

Who has more at stake in the future than young people? I have a lot of hope in the younger gen. I think more of them are woke than maga & they are pissed & they aren't going to put up with business as usual. ~crosses fingers

Spread this far & wide, especially at election time.

[2naSalit]

7. Wisconsin needs to...

Do this. I hope for their success.

[Snackshack]

8. A perfect example.

Of how the fucking media continues to stoke and fan the flames of the divide in this country for profit.

“And the Democratic margin of victory that delivered control of the nonpartisan court to liberals”

For years I never really paid any attention to the framing of issues in the public sphere. That is a mistake when the so called “news” is so horribly partisan.

Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walter, Edward Murrow…and many more,… none of these people would recognize the news industry they built.

[SWBTATTReg]

9. And what's so ironic about this whole development? Republicans via their scumbag maneuvers

to suppress the votes and increase the allowable voting age of voters, etc. all did this to themselves.

Of course, democrats, via their enraged 10s and 100s of thousands voted too and helped the student turnouts too.

[hibbing]

10. They will propose raising the voting age..haha n/t

[appalachiablue]

12. Ty, excellent!

[Tetrachloride]

13. Dane County could do outreach to the several smaller

Wisconsin campuses. Even high schools.

[Sky Jewels]

15. Dear DUers who keep dissing Gen Z:

Just. Stop.

[maxsolomon]

20. I'll disrespect every generation.

they're all insufferable in particular ways.

-a late boomer

[Sky Jewels]

22. Gen Z has saved our ass over the past three election cycles.

They're "The Greatest Generation" of our time.

[maxsolomon]

24. Do you know any?

They're Insufferable!

& I'm glad they show up to vote Dem in marginally higher percentages than previous generations did at their age.

[Sky Jewels]

29. Uhh, I do indeed. I gave birth to two Gen Zers. They are not at all "insufferable."

They are fantastic, productive citizens. They're educated, compassionate, progressive, and involved in careers that help others. Their friends are similarly wonderful, intelligent, contributing people. So are many of their former classmates.

You know who I find insufferable? My age cohort: old Gen X/young Boomers.

Disclaimer: Yes, these are all generalizations. Do exceptions exist? Of course.

[maxsolomon]

32. OK, humor is dead on DU. I keep forgetting.

I should have included the in my original response.

[Sky Jewels]

35. Okay, sorry.

I usually pick up on it and I'm usually the one rolling my eyes at someone who doesn't "get it."

I didn't sleep well last night, and that's my excuse.

Mea culpa.

[calimary]

40. Maybe not dead, but definitely ailing, and

that’s probably because too many of us have had experiences with “cantcha take a joke” that’s actually mean-spirited and/or deliberately harmful. And not just here, by any means.

Humbly submitted.

[TygrBright]

16. Yes, this is why they're working so hard to kill higher education (well, ALL education, really...) n

[SpankMe]

18. We can't keep the Whitehouse and Senate, and take back the House, with college towns only

We need to energize the Millennial/Gen-Z contingent nationwide. It's been said that up to 70% of this group tends toward progressive on today's issues. That's tens of millions of votes.

Since 87 million eligible voters didn't vote in '20, just a few million of these being mobilized in swing states could make a difference and save the country.

[Sky Jewels]

21. And every year that gets easier

because about 3 million members of the more conservative Silent, Boomer, and Gen X generations die and 4 million Gen Zers turn 18. And Millennials are not shifting right as drastically as they age as those preceding generations did.

[oldsoftie]

36. It seems few people realize that; 1/3 of eligible voters DIDNT VOTE in '20

Were they waiting for an "important" election? Like these people who say "I only play the lottery when the jackpot is over 100 million". Because FORTY million just isnt worth the trouble?
I wonder what the numbers would been had turnout been 90%

[lark]

23. Fuck around and find out time for R'fascists.

Taking away women's rights to control their reproduction hits young women hard and they fight back by voting.

R's fucked around and now they're about to find out that their hatred of women is about to explode in their faces!!!!!

Next up - R's in red states don't allow college students to vote without ID showing a permanent address, not just a college dorm, or they can't vote. They want to disallow college ID and have already done that in lots of states. Bet laws like this are being written now in places that don't already do this.

[oldsoftie]

38. If they DO allow that, then those students must vote their home ballot

Make it count wherever it can be cast

[GregariousGroundhog]

25. Dane County is also growing faster than Wisconsin as a whole

Between 1970 and 2020, Dane County's population grew by 93% compared to Wisconsin's growth of 33%. As such, Dane County's impact on the election of candidates to statewide offices is growing.

[Wild blueberry]

26. This is good news!

Thank you.

[Warpy]

27. That's how it should be

You go to college to learn just how big the world is and to think about things outside the narrow limits of childhood.

When that happens, the GOP becomes far less attractive as anything but another stupid, self destructive cult.

[SunSeeker]

28. K & R

[oldsoftie]

34. There are some Republicans who've tired of the far-right bullshit.

They are also making THEIR voices heard at the ballot boxes.
I've seen it where I live & it happened in WI in 2020

[BeckyDem]

37. Absolutely true.

I love the signs of progress and encouragement.

[oldsoftie]

39. Remember the infamous Ron Johnson video?

He explained that Trump LOST in WI because many people skipped that line while voting GOP down ballot.
He didnt like it when he found out he'd been recorded. Because that ruined his orange ass-kissing

Same thing happened here in GA; the down ballot republicans got thousands more votes than trump. They skipped it. Or voted Libertarian.

[BeckyDem]

41. I had forgotten!

That is an excellent reminder indicating what they wanted and didn't want. Thank you.