Campaign 2008 gets warmed up with Madison visits

The flurry of campaign activity that swept across Wisconsin and blew into Madison this month, alongside record snowfalls, provided a glimpse of what life will be like here on campus in the weeks and months leading up to the November elections.

Wisconsin is a key part of the group of swing states — also known as battleground states or purple states — that are just as likely to go for the Democrat as they are for the Republican seeking the White House. Just four years ago, Sen. John Kerry narrowly defeated George W. Bush — by a mere 12,000 votes — to get the state’s 10 Electoral College votes. It wasn’t enough to help him win the election, but the outcome cemented Wisconsin’s up-for-grabs status in presidential politics after Al Gore defeated Bush by just 5,000 votes four years earlier.

Because the state is not an automatic win for either party, that means the candidates have to work hard for votes here. And they will.

UW–Madison enjoyed a parade of campaign visits leading up to the recent Wisconsin primary — including former President Bill Clinton stumping for his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, at the Stock Pavilion, where Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and William Howard Taft have all spoken. Just two days earlier, Sen. Barack Obama filled the Kohl Center with supporters and curious undecided voters. And one day before the primary, Hillary Clinton rallied thousands of her backers off campus at the Monona Terrace Convention Center. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee also held a rally on Feb. 14 at the Concourse Hotel in Madison.

Voters also couldn’t escape the campaign on the radio or their televisions. A report from the Wisconsin Advertising Project shows the four Democratic and Republican candidates spent a little over $2 million to broadcast more than 8,000 spots on Wisconsin airwaves. Obama spent more than twice as much on TV advertising in Wisconsin than the other three candidates combined and nearly five times as much as Clinton. The Illinois senator was on the air a week ahead of Clinton, something UW–Madison political science professor Kenneth Goldstein, director of the advertising project, says was a distinct advantage in the race.

Thirty-seven percent of eligible voters, or about 1.5 million people, cast ballots last Tuesday in the state’s open primary — won by Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain — a record number fueled by new and younger voters.

Many of the new voters, particularly Democrats, in last week’s primary — in which voters don’t have to declare a party affiliation — came from college campuses including UW–Madison. Exit polls showed 15 percent had gone to the polls for the first time; Obama won nearly 75 percent of voters under age 25. Both Democrats and Republicans are now looking to March 4 contests in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont.

Wisconsin’s primary was only a preview of the level of interest Madison and the state will see on the way to Election Day. Campaign stops will become a fact of campus and city life in the coming months. In 2004, Bush visited Wisconsin more than a dozen times, and Kerry was here more than 20 times.

When it comes to the general election, the campaigns will turn up their level of interest in the Badger State. That means more candidate visits, more political ads during your favorite programs and more of those robo-calls (where a candidate’s recorded voice asks for your support).

For the political junkie, or those newly afflicted with campaign fever, it’s going to be a fun ride.