16 Dane
Dane County (pop. 560,000) is home to Wisconsin’s state capitol, flagship state university, and lion’s share of recent population growth. Not only did the county’s population grow by 32% from 2000 to 2020, the net number of votes cast for the Democratic presidential candidate grew by 173% over the same period. The racial makeup of Dane County’s population is similar to the rest of the state, but Dane is unusually highly educated. Fifty-four percent of adults over 24 have at least a bachelor’s degree and 22% have an advanced degree.
16.1 Demographics
16.2 county election results
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16.3 municipality election results
The City of Madison, a Democratic stronghold, contains about half the county’s population. Almost all the communities surrounding the City of Madison are also Democratic. In fact, Madison is not even the most Democratic community of the bunch (that distinction belongs to the Village of Shorewood Hills). In 2020, only three Dane county municipalities voted for Donald Trump. They are the towns of Dane and Vienna and the sliver of the City of Edgerton which lies within Dane County. Dane is comparatively wealthy. The median income exceeds the state average in all but 3 municipalities.
This map shows the location of each municipality in the county, as it existed in 2022.
These dot plots show the most recent election results in each municipality.
To more clearly illustrate recent changes in municipality voting trends, these scatterplots compare the most recent vote for president and senator with the shift from that office’s previous election.
These maps show show every election result since 2000 in each municipality.
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