I woke up last Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. to work the opening shift at Goodrich with a pit in my stomach. Like every other person on campus, I immediately checked the news before getting out of bed and discovered that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. A few hours earlier, my home state, Wisconsin, turned red, pushing Trump over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. 

I’ll admit that I had optimistic hope for my home state. Vice President Kamala Harris made an effort to rally young voters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a week prior to election night. Evidently, it was not enough to make up for the rightward shift in rural areas in the state and low voter turnout in blue counties. 

Since Wednesday, I’ve been trying to make sense of what this result means for me, especially as a swing state voter attending college in a blue state. When I was picking colleges, I wanted a liberal campus, so the unstable political sphere in Wisconsin and its status as a battleground state rendered UW-Madison unfit for me — ­despite its location in a blue county. The allure of Massachusetts won me over. I felt safe going to college in a state that regularly voted blue in elections and state policies. 

I grew up in Madison, Wis. My parents immigrated together to the United States from Peru 23 years ago and started our little family in Utah before moving to the midwest a couple of years later. They do not have the right to vote. When I was growing up, my parents and I disagreed on many political issues. I was finding my identity in the world, and I felt that I was looking for answers that my religious, conservative community at the time refused to give me. I often thought to myself: If we preach taking care of and loving our neighbors, how can conservatives decide to promote policies that do the opposite? In my stubbornness as a learner, I felt that I was owed answers, and my parents struggled to satisfy me. I sought to make my own opinions and educate myself on both progressive and conservative policies in my state.

I feel that conservatives in Wisconsin learned to disguise the changes in their agenda in order to appeal to progressives. Election results convey a red shift in the suburbs and in rural areas nationwide with Donald Trump winning the popular vote. I see this shift in my own suburb back home. Most families I know from high school identify as liberal regarding social issues, and I am curious what caused voters in Wisconsin to turn the state red. Working class individuals like dairy farmers in the state feel neglected by Democrats and voted red on the ballot for a chance at their own survival. While this is not my own experience living in Wisconsin, it is important to consider this perspective in all battleground states and to ask ourselves: Why do some voters feel left behind in swing states’ policies? 

The College’s campus is a blue bubble. Many students — such as residents of New York, California, or Massachusetts — go back to blue homes, neighborhoods, and communities. That’s not the case for a swing state voter like myself. We may go back to homes and families that fundamentally disagree with our political beliefs. We may hide parts of our identity to fit in and disguise ourselves in conservative neighborhoods. During breaks, some may count down the days until we can return to campus. This is not to say that those from blue states never feel trapped based on politics. But progressive policies in a blue state create structural support for basic rights and identities that battleground and red states may lack. For swing or red state voters, the ability to access these progressive policies while attending the College is an advantage that we do not have back home. 

I am in mourning for my home state and what the future holds for the next four years in Wisconsin. I worry about how education will change in the state: Will we continue to ban curricula and books in our classrooms because of conservative uproar? I worry about whether there will be further restrictions to reproductive rights in Wisconsin. I worry about how our state government plans to handle the housing crisis, especially within cities like Madison and Milwaukee, which are impacted by gerrymandering and redlining policies. What about the people of color and marginalized communities in overwhelmingly white Wisconsin? Will policies be focused on supporting individuals like my immigrant parents, or will the government continue to say that they “don’t belong here”? Will I be able to get married in my state as a queer person?

We all had a personal stake in this election. I have been grieving my home state while removed from it in this blue bubble, and I feel isolated and alone. I fear for my sister, who goes to college in Iowa. I am scared for the people of color and the immigrants in Wisconsin. When I mailed my absentee ballot, my parents told me they couldn’t wait to go to the polls with me someday. My mom was excited about a female president.  

I am scared about what these next four years will look like as a resident of Wisconsin. I will continue to mourn on this campus alongside other swing state voters about the crumbling of our home states. It is OK to feel lost and to wonder where we go from here. But once the grief settles, it will be time for us in battleground and red states to mobilize, focus on local representation, and make our governments hear us. Still, I will shed tears for Wisconsin and grieve, imagining what could’ve been. 

Francesca Castellanos ’26 is a political science major from Madison, Wis.