The Vitality of College Towns in the 2024 Election

The air is getting cooler, the sounds of marching bands echo, and classes are back in session. That means the College Towns in the American Communities Project are experiencing their seasonal expansion.

The return of students always has a big impact on these communities — economically and atmospherically. But in election years, especially years with a close presidential race, the impacts are bigger and reach deeply into politics. This is especially true in the Democratic “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Those three states are not only crucial battlegrounds in 2024, but also all home to big research universities with huge student enrollments. And the data suggest that what those students do, or don’t do, in November may determine who wins the White House.

Why College Towns Matter

To be clear, in a close election, small changes in the attitudes in any voting bloc can be important. Small differences in margin can swing a state blue or red. But the vote in the College Towns is especially interesting for two reasons.

First, they offer an opportunity to examine a specific kind of voter concentrated in a small area. College Towns contain a higher-than-average number of 18- to 29-year-old voters, and many of those voters are living a different kind of life than most Americans. They live together and interact with each other in ways that can create a reinforcing energy.

Second, the voters in College Towns can be fickle. The communities tend to vote Democratic, but turnout can fluctuate a lot, and third-party candidates can have a real impact here.

For instance, former President Donald Trump got the same share of the vote in 171 College Town counties in 2016 as he did in 2020 – 44%. It wasn’t enough to win the College Towns in either election, but the margin of his defeat looked very different in the two elections. In 2016, Trump lost the College Towns by 5 percentage points – 44% to 49% for Hillary Clinton. But in 2020, Trump lost the counties by 10 points to President Joe Biden – 44% to 54%.

And that difference can matter especially in close states. Again, consider the “Blue Wall” states.

Close States, Big Schools

In the 2016 election, the margins were remarkably close in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump won the states by 11,000 votes, 44,000 votes, and 23,000 votes, respectively.

Now look at the populations of the universities in the big College Town counties in the three states.

In Michigan, the universities in the two big College Towns hold more than 100,000 students. In Pennsylvania, it’s 48,000. In Wisconsin, it’s 49,000. When those students turn out, they can swing close elections, usually toward the Democrats.

The question, of course, is will they turn out.

Going into the summer, polls showed a lot of voter apathy among 18- to 29-year-old voters. There wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden. The war in the Middle East had stirred tensions on college campuses with protests (some of them large) in favor of Palestinians and against the U.S. government’s support of the Israeli government.

To be clear, foreign affairs and foreign conflicts are usually not big issues for voters, unless U.S. soldiers are involved. And as big as some of the protests on college campuses seemed to be, the students involved in them were a fraction of the total student bodies in those places.

But small numbers can make a big difference, particularly in the College Towns where the votes can move in different ways.

Third-Party Power

To understand how big the third-party vote can be in the College Towns, consider the 2012 and 2016 presidential races in the Blue Wall states.

In 2016, Trump actually got 10,000 fewer votes in the College Towns in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did in 2012, but the Democratic vote advantage shrank because Hillary Clinton received about 12,000 fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012.

Where did the votes go? To third-party candidates Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and others.

Trump pulled out quite a few more votes from the College Towns in 2020 — 36,000 more than Romney did in 2012. But it didn’t matter, because Biden pulled 131,000 more votes out of those counties in 2020 than Obama did in 2012. (Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 total by more than 142,000 votes.)

The takeaway? For Democrats, winning the College Town vote or even making sure voters turn out is not their biggest hurdle. Rather, Democrats face the twin challenges of running up a massive turnout and ensuring College Town voters cast their ballots for Democrats.

In the spring, it looked like the Democrats might be failing on both points. Now that the students are back on campus, their interest in the election and their enthusiasm for Harris are going to be two key points to watch in what’s shaping up to be a close election.

Visit our two-part series on how young voters in one Michigan College Town are accessing the news and the issues that matter most to them in this election.