On this drizzly afternoon, inside the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Memorial Union, students huddle in groups, chatting away as staff from a nearby ice cream shop hand out coupons for free scoops of flavors like “Union Utopia” and orange chocolate chip.
“It just feels like this country has been run by so many old people,” says Elliot Oquist. He is sitting in a cozy booth, focused on his laptop and tuning out the buzzy cacophony around him with wireless headphones.
The 19-year-old voted “uninstructed” in Wisconsin’s April presidential primary election. It was a protest vote against President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Since WUWM spoke with Oquist and the other young people in this story, protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank have boiled over on college campuses around the country, including at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee.
But Oquist is not likely to lodge a protest vote in November. He says he’ll probably vote for Biden. “I really don't like either of the candidates,” he says. “I just think [former President Donald] Trump is way worse for society as a whole. And Biden is just kind of not great, either. But [Biden is] I think a better alternative. I just wish the Democratic Party had nominated literally anyone else.”
This is a common refrain on campuses in Wisconsin right now. Whether it's the war in Gaza, the candidates’ ages, or a perceived lack of urgency around climate change, young people are unimpressed by Biden and Trump.
These are young people who helped tip this narrowly divided state towards Democrats in several recent major elections, including Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020. Fifty-eight percent of the youth vote went to Biden in that election, compared to 39% for Trump. That edge is likely much higher in Dane County, home of Madison, which includes this state's flagship university. Biden won Wisconsin by around 20,000 votes.
“I would say there's a lot of defeatism among students and people on campus,” says Artur Siklos, a junior at UW-Madison studying communication arts. “I think that there are people who are, for the most part, pinching their nose and just voting or planning on voting for Biden.”
Whitman Bottari is communications director of the UW College Democrats. She understands that many students are upset with Biden due to his handling of the war in Gaza. “We continue to hear that from students all across campus,” she says.
Bottari says she and the student Democrats’ chair, Grace Florence, also have their own hesitancies around the current administration's policies around the war. “What we've really been focusing on is ‘not voting is a vote for Trump,’” she notes. Bottari says even if students don't agree with Biden on everything, “he's always going to be better than Trump. He has better policies than Trump on the war in Gaza.”
Bottari also tries to refocus the issues. “Students at UW-Madison really care about what the rest of the country [cares about],” she says. “That's abortion and women's rights. They also care about affordable housing and being able to go to college affordably and graduate without an insane amount of debt.”
She says they’ve mobilized a big volunteer base and will be using the REACH app for outreach. “We have a lot of students who have worked on political campaigns and already know these apps very well. We're ready to knock every door and every dorm and every apartment building on campus,” Bottari says.
But this apathy, or even hostility towards the candidates, is felt by Democrats and Republicans alike, says Thomas Pyle. He’s chair of the UW-Madison College Republicans. “It's clear on campus that neither candidate is particularly liked,” says Pyle. “I've never really experienced an election like this before. So, it'll be really interesting to see what happens.”
![Thomas Pyle, chair of the UW-Madison College Republicans, [far right] and Whitman Bottari, communications director for the UW-Madison College Democrats [far left] participate in a student debate.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/13b2102/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4032x3024+0+0/resize/840x630!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F9c%2Fe4%2Faa546cca4933a66925226d6b71eb%2Fdebate-from-front.jpg)
The 21-year-old voted for Trump in 2020 but is now undecided, even though he’s all-in on down-ballot Republicans. He says January 6th changed things for him. But no matter what he thinks about the top of the ticket, he says it’s tough being a conservative on campus right now. “It's difficult socially,” he says. “Friends and peers and even professors judge you for your political views that are not in line with what they view is correct.”
But Pyle sees the increased discontent from students about Biden’s approach to Israel and Palestine as an entry point. “You see a lot more people who are open minded on campus, and when before we might get shot a nasty glare, now these people are kind of walking by, and a friend might come off and talk to us and just kind of explore what their options are. So, I think there's a spot for conservatives to possibly step in. And yeah, we'll see what happens.”
Pyle is waiting for the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this summer, in Milwaukee and Chicago, respectively, as well as Trump’s announcement about his vice presidential pick to decide who he’ll vote for.
Meanwhile, both candidates are emphasizing the importance of Wisconsin as a swing state. Trump visited Green Bay on the day of the Wisconsin presidential primaries and will be visiting Waukesha this week. He’s been railing against inflation and immigration issues, while decrying those at the helm of his court battles.
Biden was in Wisconsin in early April at a different Madison college campus only a few miles away — Madison Area Technical College. He chose the site to hype up his new student loan forgiveness plan.
Biden’s plan would eliminate student debt for some borrowers, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Biden’s earlier, broader debt forgiveness plan in June. This time the administration is going through a rulemaking process and is targeting specific groups of borrowers and interest balances.
In a tree-lined plaza at the technical college, 19-year-old Chloe Gabsch has just finished class. She calls herself left-leaning and knows Biden came to speak to students about student loans. But that outreach hasn't convinced her, because it’s overshadowed by the war in Gaza. “I have friends that have student loans. I've been lucky enough to not need them, but — and they definitely feel crushed by them. But I mean, [my friends] still have lives to live, and people in Palestine don't.”
Still other students, like Matt Mathiason, are wary of student loan relief plans altogether. He’s an independent who voted for Biden in 2020 but is now undecided.
“As a student coming back to school as an adult, I've worked pretty hard to put myself in a position to be able to afford this,” says Mathiason. “And I guess I don't agree with some of the student loan forgiveness policies that Biden has started to enact. Not that I don't think that education should be affordable for everyone. But for those people who've worked hard to pay for their schools and haven't taken out loans, that doesn't seem equitable to me.”
Mathiason says his reticence about Biden also comes from what’s happening at the US-Mexico border. But he doesn’t solely blame the president for the troubles there. “I think it's tough when you have parties infighting amongst each other, and of course you have people on the fringe on both sides of the aisle. So just having the ability to do what's best for everyone whilst not pandering to the extremists, I think it makes it a challenge for anything to get done.”
Returning student Lourdes Gallegos is also fed up with politics. She’s studying audio visual design and is pretty sure she’s not going to vote in November. “I think one of the main reasons is because I think I’ve just lost hope in politicians. Maybe if there was more female influence on politics, I think I would go for it.”
“I think we need a change,” she says, with resignation.
