Among the orange and yellow leaves falling from trees in late October in northern Wisconsin are red, white and blue signs bearing the name of Republican candidate Donald Trump and blue and white signs promoting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

The jumble of signs populating country roads shows how this state is as politically purple as it gets. And so does the deluge of advertisements in mailboxes and on television.

Unlike Minnesota, Wisconsin is one of seven key states that will decide the presidential election — and it’s getting outsized attention.

The state has become something of a revolving door in 2024: Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was in Manitowoc and Waukesha on Monday while Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance was in Wausau and Racine. Harris and Trump return to the state for competing rallies on Wednesday.

In addition to the competitive presidential race, there is a crucial Senate race in Wisconsin between Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin and businessman Eric Hovde. Wisconsin also has new legislative maps after years of litigation over boundaries seen as tilted in favor of Republicans, creating more competitive races in some pockets of the state.

Wisconsinites cannot escape the constant barrage of political advertisements and leaflets.

“I end up watching a lot of Netflix, you know, because there’s no commercials,” said Pat Edwardsen, chair of the Barron County Democratic Party.

Edwardsen recently hosted a Wisconsin U.S. Senate debate watch party for the Baldwin-Hovde race. She served a hot tater tot dish based on a Walz recipe.

Edwardsen said Walz being chosen as Harris’ running mate helped build support for the Democratic ticket in this county that reliably votes Republican. She said some Minnesotans have volunteered on this side of the border.

Edwardsen returned to Rice Lake after several decades away, noting how the political complexion of the state had shifted from one biased toward Democrats to one that was much more haphazard.

“It’s kind of true,” Edwardsen said. “The fate of the nation rests on us.”

Wisconsin was one of the last states to be called in the 2016 presidential election and its 10 electoral votes helped propel Trump to the top. He won by less than a percentage point, or about 23,000 votes out of nearly 3 million votes cast.

Democrats took over the state, reclaiming the governorship in 2018 and winning the 2020 presidential race when President Joe Biden defeated Trump. Four years ago, the results were also close: Biden won by less than 20,000 out of 3.2 million votes cast.

Neither party is taking anything for granted and campaigning is intense, even in rural areas like Barron County.

Randy Cook, chairman of the county Republican Party, has long been involved in local politics. He laments that politics focuses too much on the personality and flaws of candidates rather than the issues on which they are running.

“Now it’s ‘I don’t like him,’ ‘I don’t like him,’ and it’s more of a driving force,” said Cook, who has been asked to run for county president this year after unrest within the local party which saw its charter revoked.

“It bothers me because you’re not educating yourself, and that’s really the problem,” he said. “No matter who gets into this position, whatever policies they put in place, they will last for a while. »

Adam Kunz, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said Wisconsin’s urban communities are different from those in other traditional “blue wall” states like Minnesota and Michigan. Wisconsin’s big cities don’t have as much ethnic diversity as other states, Kunz said.

“What you have is you have communities that are historically white-collar and blue-collar communities that are still very urban, but haven’t seen the influx that we would see in, say, some parts of Detroit or other parts of Michigan, or in places like St. Paul or Minneapolis,” Kunz said.

Both campaigns are tapping into this rural, working-class resentment that became so prominent when Trump ran in 2016 and is coming back to the forefront.

“Are you in a better place than you were four years ago because if the answer is no – and I think for most Wisconsinites the answer is no – then let’s bring Donald Trump back to the White House,” Vance said during a stop in Waukesha last week. .

Walz plays on that same sentiment, striving to establish a common connection with voters feeling economically strained. During a recent stop in Madison alongside former President Barack Obama, Walz highlighted how his own economic position stands out in the race.

“We both grew up in middle-class families,” Walz said of he and Harris. “We didn’t start with $400 million.”

He added: “For God’s sake, they said I might be the poorest person to ever run for vice president.”

Many Wisconsin voters say they are tired of all the attention or have declined a reporter’s invitation to talk politics. A table full of late afternoon beer drinkers at Leinenkugel’s Lounge in Chippewa Falls showed no interest, although they mentioned they would be happy when all the attention was gone.

Rachel Zidon doesn’t mind talking about how she voted. The teacher went to the Obama-Walz rally in Madison. She said the Electoral College had to go.

“Personally, I feel like my state shouldn’t have that much influence, and I think one person should have a voice,” Zidon said. “But as long as we have that influence, we’re going to try to use it to do positive things.”