UW–Madison nationally recognized for greatest overall turnout in 2022 Big Ten Voting Challenge

The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, a national nonpartisan initiative, recognized the University of Wisconsin–Madison with several awards for student voting in the 2022 midterm election, including greatest overall turnout in the 2022 Big Ten Voting Challenge.

ALL IN also honored UW–Madison for having the highest student voter registration and voter turnout among four-year colleges in Wisconsin and certified it as a platinum campus for its level of student voter engagement in the 2022 midterm elections.

Voter turnout among UW–Madison students in 2022 held steady at 55.8 percent compared to 56 percent in the 2018 midterm elections. That’s higher than the national voting rate of college students in 2022, which was 30.6 percent, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement.

UW–Madison has participated in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge since 2016 as part of the university’s commitment to nonpartisan civic education on campus. Student voting outreach and education at UW are coordinated by BadgersVote, a partnership between the Morgridge Center for Public Service, the Madison City Clerk’s Office, Associated Students of Madison, University Relations, Strategic Communication, Student Affairs and a number of other campus units.

“I’m proud to see that so many of our eligible students chose to participate in the democratic process,” says John Zumbrunnen, faculty chair of the BadgersVote Coalition as well as senior vice provost for academic affairs and vice provost for teaching and learning. “These awards reflect our students’ continued leadership among their peers and their commitment to the hard work of democratic self-governance.”

UW–Madison was recognized alongside more than 500 campuses using data from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE) out of Tufts University, which found that in 2022, colleges and universities had the second-highest voter turnout among students in a midterm election since NSLVE began measuring this data.

“The ALL IN Awards were created to celebrate nonpartisan democratic engagement and the outstanding campus voter registration and turnout rates achieved by our ALL IN campuses,” says Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, executive director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “ALL IN is proud to celebrate and honor top-performing campuses, like UW–Madison, who demonstrate that nonpartisan student voter engagement is possible and effective.”

More than 1,060 institutions enrolling more than 10 million students participate in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, which supports colleges and universities in achieving excellence in nonpartisan student voter engagement.