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Nancy Kidd, a coordinator with the Democratic Party of Door County in northeast Wisconsin, was willing to brave a door-to-door canvass for Democratic votes during a soaking rain in October.
“I don’t melt,” she said, gathering her things at the party’s office in downtown Sturgeon Bay.
But knocking on the doors of Wisconsin residents during a Packers game on a Sunday afternoon?
She hesitated. “It’s not a good idea,” Ms. Kidd said.
Off she went anyway. Maybe it was worth interrupting potentially persuadable voters engrossed in football when there were a mere 22 days left before Election Day. After all, she lives in a county that brims with both strategic and symbolic importance.
Door County is known in the Midwest as a scenic, artsy summer enclave with thriving tourism and agriculture industries — a respite, mostly, from chain stores, traffic lights and the annoying buzz of the outside world. It has not been able to avoid the frenzy of the presidential election, a reflection of how fierce the contest has become even in Wisconsin’s more remote corners.
The county, a peninsula on Lake Michigan in the northeast corner of the state, is a rare bellwether: It has voted for every presidential winner since 1996. And in the national battleground of Wisconsin, it is a swing county that could be won by a tiny margin: In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald J. Trump there by only 292 votes.
In the final weeks of the campaign, there was no ignoring the ubiquitous reminders of the election throughout the county.
Last week, dozens of Democrats lined the streets of Sturgeon Bay, the county seat, waving signs that promoted reproductive rights, Social Security and public schools. A sprawling store on Highway 42 that usually sells fireworks had been repurposed as a “Trump 2024” merchandise shop, greeting visitors heading to the northern section of the county.
Nowhere else in Wisconsin has drawn more volunteers to the Democratic side: A spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign said that nearly 300 people had begun volunteering since she became the nominee. That’s close to 1 percent of the total county population of 30,000 and more volunteers per capita than in any other county in Wisconsin.
“I have never seen this much enthusiasm,” said Kris Sadur, the chair of the Door County Democrats.
Stephanie Soucek, who has been chair of the Republican Party of Door County since 2019, said that her party also had seen an uptick in volunteers, though she declined to put a number on it.
“Everything is more intense,” Ms. Soucek said. “I know both sides have had quite a bit of activity.”
Displays of yard signs alongside cornfields and cherry orchards throughout the county have gone from subtle to extravagant.
It is practically rare to see only one Trump or Harris sign in someone’s property; more common is a wall of a dozen signs. “Save America,” a popular Republican sign says. From the other side: “Vote for Democrats. They vote for us.”
The county Democrats have placed about 1,500 signs in 300 locations, they said.
Some residents have pushed back on all the politicking. Perhaps something should be done, some have suggested, to reduce the sense of a permanent campaign.
“I know all about free speech, but this signage seems to be a severe distraction from our natural beauty, for residents and visitors alike,” Linda Wait of Sevastopol, Wis., wrote in a letter to the editor in The Peninsula Pulse, a newspaper, this summer. “Perhaps consideration should be given to a 30-day pre-election time frame on political signage.”
David Eliot, founder and publisher of The Pulse, said in an interview from his newspaper office on the shore of Lake Michigan on Monday that the tradition of Door County had encouraged community and cooperation no matter where you stood politically.
“You get both liberal and conservative coming to a beautiful place,” he said, adding that governors from both parties had historically kept summer homes there.
But while the county has become increasingly roiled by presidential elections since 2016, this one may be a peak.
He pulled out the current issue of The Pulse and pointed to two half-page ads, each from a different end of the ideological spectrum, both heavy with promises and statistical claims.
“This is what we’re inundated with now,” he said.
Some residents said they had been moved to political organizing because of recent events, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Emma Cox moved to the town of Sister Bay in 2017 to open a boutique with her mother, but then she became involved with protests and other organizing, especially with younger voters who had not been politically involved before.
“At a certain point, you don’t just exist in Door County — you exist in Wisconsin,” said Ms. Cox, part of the left-leaning group Northern Door Activism. “You have to poke your head outside of the bubble. Now people are so much more active, so much more vocal.”
Ms. Soudek, the Republican chair, said that Trump voters in Door County, where the population is overwhelmingly white, had been especially swayed by his promises to stem illegal immigration. When she has spoken to hesitant Republican voters, she has tried to steer them away from focusing on Mr. Trump as a person.
“I try to focus so much on the issues,” she said, comparing Mr. Trump to the off-putting physician on the television drama “House.”
“Maybe they don’t like his personality or they’re not a big fan of his in general,” she said. “I try to tell them, something he says is not going to affect your life personally. Maybe he had a really bad bedside manner, but he saved lives.”
In stormy Sturgeon Bay on Sunday, Ms. Kidd and Ms. Sadur knocked on doors, hopping in and out of their car, an iPhone open to a canvassing app speckled with rainwater.
Most of the residents did not open their doors, the Packers game visible through picture windows. One, Ed Winter, politely invited the canvassers in and told him that though he was not a Democrat, he planned to vote for Ms. Harris.
They thanked him and left quickly. “Who’s next on the list?” Ms. Sadur asked, climbing behind the wheel.
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