For Democrats competing in statewide races across the country, one of the keys to winning close races is by running up the score in deep-blue college towns, filled with the sort of young and liberal voters who are a significant part of the party’s base.
And as President Joe Biden aims to win reelection, it is in cities like Madison, Wis., and Chapel Hill, N.C., where the election will likely be won or lost, given the tight 2020 margins in the swing states.
But the traditional Democratic playbook for turning out the party’s most reliable voters has hit a major roadblock over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, with young and liberal voters overwhelmingly opposed to the conflict in Gaza.
In Dane County, Wis., which contains the capital city of Madison and has become an increasingly pivotal part of the Democratic calculus for winning the key Midwestern swing state, The New York Times recently illustrated the challenges that Biden may face this year.
In 2020, Biden easily won Dane County, emerging with a 181,000-vote margin over then-President Donald Trump en route to winning Wisconsin by roughly 20,000 votes. But this year, recent polling has shown him lagging among the young and minority voters that he’ll need to defeat Trump.
Last week, Biden won nearly 89% of the vote in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary, per unofficial AP results.
However, in Dane, he won roughly 84% of the vote, with 15% of primary voters selecting “uninstructed” instead of backing the incumbent. The latter designation is tied to the “uncommitted” movement that rose to prominence in Michigan as many Democrats there protested against the administration for not backing a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
Statewide, nearly 50,000 voters selected the “uninstructed” option, a figure that far exceeds the raw vote margin of Biden’s 2020 victory in Wisconsin.
Megan Eisenstein, the communications director of the Lawrence University Student Democrats, told The Times while in Madison for a College Democrats convention that she was “a little bit nervous” about the enthusiasm gap among young voters.
“I think right now … the hardest thing is to make young people excited about Joe Biden,” she told the newspaper.
Biden traveled to Madison on Monday to unveil his revamped student-loan forgiveness plan, which could aid more than 30 million borrowers.
For many young voters, the student-loan forgiveness plan originally proposed by the administration and struck down by the US Supreme Court last year was a huge disappointment, as Biden had campaigned heavily on the issue in 2020.
But Gaza remains a dominant issue on the minds of many voters in places like Dane, and Biden will have to navigate that dynamic as he continues to engage in international diplomacy and speak with voters about his administration’s record.
