It's already WisGOP's Waterloo, and Dane County's growth will boost Harris, Baldwin in 2024.

Recently, I noticed that the Wisconsin Department of Administration released their final estimates of population for Wisconsin communities for 2024. These numbers don't just look at the total population, but also the voting age population (VAP), and with the election looming, I wanted to see what effects population changes might have on the Wisconsin electorate in this presidential election vs the last one.

Overall, the DOA says that the voting age population in Wisconsin has gone up by just over 101,000 people since 2020, or a bit over 1.6%. Not surprisingly, Dane County is leading the way in that growth, with nearly 33,000 more people in its VAP than 4 years ago. The next largest gainer was Waukesha County, with just over 7,000 people, and Brown County, with a gain of slightly more than 5,900.

Then I looked at the results of the 2020 election in each county of Wisconsin, and change both the Dem and GOP vote totals by the same rate as the changes in voting age population. And because heavily-Dem Dane County has grown so much compared to any other county in Wisconsin, it means that solely on the basis of population changes (with nothing else changing), Kamala Harris would do better against Donald Trump than Joe Biden did in 2020.

Overall, these changes in voting age population would turn a 20,600 win for Joe Biden into a win of more than 30,000 for Kamala Harris. And we should set our baselines for Wisconsin counties accordingly when we think about election returns in 2024.

Obviously, many other changes in turnout rates and especially changes in who voters choose will have a larger effect on who ultimately wins our state. But I am telling you that Dane County's continued growth is likely already giving a boost to the chances of Dems Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin for November 5, and I think we need to keep that in the back of our heads as the votes come in.