In Wisconsin, Young People Are Thinking Beyond the Ballot Box

As Swing Voters in a Swing State, Their Votes Count. But Their Political Action Goes Deeper Than Election Day

In Wisconsin, more than 12 elections in the last 24 years have been won by less than 30,000 votes—a statistic that has become a talking point among politicians. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by a little over 20,500 votes.

That election after election here is determined by such razor-thin margins underscores the potential influence of young voters. The University of Wisconsin campus at Madison alone has nearly 50,000 students. In the 2022 midterm elections, nearly half of Wisconsinites under age 25 cast a ballot. Months later, in spring …

Hiking Wisconsin With ‘Ghosts’ of the Ice Age

A Scenic Trail Takes Me To Centuries Past, and Forward Into a Climate-Changed Future

In “Marshland Elegy,” an essay in A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold described a dawn wind slowly rolling a bank of fog across a Wisconsin marsh. “Like the white ghost …

How the Politics of Resentment Corrupted Wisconsin’s Culture of Nice

Savvy Candidates Spent the Last Decade Pitting Rural Voters Against City Folks

The April 5 presidential primaries in Wisconsin are expected to be close in both parties, and critical to deciding the Republican contest between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. And the …

Wisconsin, Monster Capital of America?

Forget Football and Cheese. My Home State Should Be Famous for Its Shaggy Werewolves and Shape-Shifting Schoolteachers.

The Pine Barrens of New Jersey may reverberate with the fetid screams of the cloven-hooved demon known as the Jersey Devil. The redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest may shake …

What We’re Debating In Paul Ryan’s Hometown

‘Chainsville’ Offers Two Competing Visions of the American Future

 

We hear so much about presidential candidates–and so little about life in the states that elect them. In “Beyond the Circus,” writers take us off the trail and give us …

Eat Cheese and Die

How Politics Soured Community—and Conversation—in Wisconsin

We hear so much about presidential candidates–and so little about life in the states that elect them. In “Beyond the Circus,” writers take us off the trail and give us …