BARABOO, Wis. — The Sauk County Courthouse Square was littered with popcorn and popsicle sticks as residents flocked to watch the annual Baraboo homecoming parade. Sitting with her mother and two little brothers at a picnic table, the looming presidential election was the last thing on Kaitlynne Roy’s mind.
The lifelong Baraboo, Wisconsin, resident said she scarcely, if ever, thinks or talks about national politics. In 2020, Roy, 24, voted for Joe Biden, her first and only time visiting the polls. But this year, she’s unsure whether she will actually cast a ballot come November.
“I want to vote for the person who is going to invest in bettering things, instead of trying to quiet the voices of the people to get power,” she said. In downtown Baraboo, a mural recognizes the diversity within one of Wisconsin's best bellwether counties. But she doesn’t yet know whether that person is Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump.
Roy’s home county has voted in line with the country in every presidential election since 2008 — voting twice for Barack Obama, for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. This partisan flip-flopping has gone hand-in-hand with modest population growth, high turnout among registered voters and shrinking margins of victory in Sauk County. In 2012, Obama won the county by nearly 6,000 votes; in 2016, Trump won by just 109 votes; in 2020, Biden won by 614 votes.
Neither party has garnered more than 51% of votes in Sauk County sinc.