It’s the fifth swing state where early voting has started.
MILWAUKEE—Voters in Wisconsin headed to the polls on Tuesday for the first day of early in-person voting as 17 million voters nationwide have already cast ballots in the contentious election.
The onset of in-person absentee voting has drawn campaigns to the state. Former President Barack Obama will appear with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in Madison on Oct. 22, in support of Vice President Kamala Harris. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the running mate of former President Donald Trump, spoke in Waukesha on Oct. 20.
As of Oct. 22, 17 million voters have already cast ballots in the 2024 election, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. Republicans are closing the gap in early voting totals. In the states that report party registration for early voting, Democrats lead Republicans by 11.3 percentage points. Around the same time in the 2020 election, Republicans were trailing by 27.6 percentage points.
In-person absentee voting is just one form of absentee voting in America’s Dairyland.
More than 590,000 absentee mail ballots had been sent out to voters across the state. Nearly 325,000 of them had been returned, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, as of Oct. 20,
Wisconsinites must show photo ID to cast their in-person absentee ballots.
FiveThirtyEight’s polling average for Wisconsin gives Harris a narrow edge of 0.3 points as of Oct. 21. RealClearPolling’s similar aggregator has Trump up by 0.2 points.
At the same time in 2016 and 2022, Trump was losing in FiveThirtyEight’s Wisconsin polling average by a much greater margin—by 8 points to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by 6.3 points to President Joe Biden in 2020. Similarly, historical averages from RealClearPolitics show Clinton leading Trump by 6.5 points and Biden leading Trump by 4.6 points on Oct. 21, 2024.
In both 2016 and 2020, the state was decided by margins of less than 1 percent.
Dollora Greene-Evans had a personal story for why she came out to the Brown Deer Village Hall to cast her in-person absentee ballot.
“It is my mother’s birthday. She’s in heaven, and I figured, this is going to double the value of my vote,” she said.
Her husband, Carl Evans, had a story too. He said his grandfather was one of a handful of black people registered to vote in Mississippi during the Civil Rights struggle of an earlier America.
“The sheriff came to the house one time to tell my grandfather not to vote. My grandfather saw him coming, ran out the back, jumped over the back fence to go vote,” he recalled.
“He said, ‘You vote every time, regardless—don’t let nobody stop you.”
The two support Harris.
Half an hour away, there was a long line to vote at the Waukesha City Hall.
David and Bruna Iljazi had come out with their young son, Anzil.
David is concerned about market stability. He worries that the economy is “a little unstable.”
Bruna, who with her husband works in the restaurant industry, said she moved from Albania to seek opportunity in the U.S. She believes she found it. But economic opportunity is a fragile thing.
“I’d like to save it,” she said.
The couple voted for Trump.Arizona’s early in-person voting began more than a week ago, on Oct. 9. Early in-person voting in Georgia kicked off on Oct. 15. Next came Hurricane Helene-battered North Carolina, on Oct. 17, followed by Nevada, on Oct. 19.
Michigan is, in a limited sense, the last of those crucial states. A mandatory early in-person voting period begins Oct. 26, nine days ahead of Nov. 5, Election Day. Yet communities there are permitted to initiate early voting from on Oct. 7, 29 days ahead of Election Day.
In the state’s most populous city, Detroit, early in-person voting started Oct. 19. Harris visited the Motor City to campaign with Detroit-born musician Lizzo.
The enthusiasm among voters has been evident in Georgia, which set a new record for turnout on the first day of early in person voting. North Carolina also clocked record numbers as early voting commenced.