Wisconsin Supreme Court Election - Prediction
Your piece by piece analysis for all things Wisconsin Supreme Court election - history, 72-county breakdown, and current dynamics all assessed and wrapped up in a hopium-free bow.
A race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat is on the docket for Tuesday, April 1, running parallel to a pair of special elections to the U.S. House in Florida. It is between Brad Schimel and Susan Crawford, who are aligned with the GOP and the Democrat Party, respectively, though the race is technically a non-partisan one. Schimel, once state Attorney General under Scott Walker, is now a Circuit Court Judge in Waukesha County, while Crawford holds the same judgeship in Dane County, Wisconsin’s ultra-left hub of collegiate indoctrination and its seat of government. This is a critical race in one of America’s key battleground states, because the winner will determine the ideological majority of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, and is expected to rule on many important issues, such as abortion rights and future Congressional maps in Wisconsin that will be favorable to the party who manages to win Tuesday’s race.
Geography
The above map is from my 72-county trend analysis overview of Wisconsin, published last September. I like to categorize my counties by political lean and type, distinguishing from standard Republican counties that may no longer produce expanding GOP margins from those that are indefinitely expanding, and separating hardcore Democrat urban strongholds from working class Democrat counties with waning margins. I wound up nailing the pick in November, with Trump carrying the Badger State’s 10 electoral votes, but have also been very clear in expressing my belief that Wisconsin’s same-day voter registration loophole and all-night counting in Milwaukee County cost the GOP another U.S. Senate seat down ballot.
As you can see, the presidential county map above closely mirrors my county classification map at the top of the section. Knowledge of these two maps is important for understanding where each candidate needs to be pulling votes from to win this race.
Here is what I had to say about the 53 counties that identify as “Crimson” – or likely to produce greater Trump margins than they did in 2020:
Nearly three-quarters of the state’s counties fall under the Crimson banner, which favors Trump tremendously because these are set to mirror the movement of Iowa, which is hard to the right, and nowhere near as generous to Democrats as they were in 2008, or even 2012, when Obama carried Wisconsin in a blowout, and in a comfortable win, respectively. I expect Harris’s maximum vote output in almost all of these to be Biden’s 2020 total, and in all likelihood, given lack of Automatic Voter Registration, organic trending away from Democrats and toward Trump, and greater scrutiny she will drop in support, which will only amplify Trump’s already huge margins.
Fixing Harris at Biden’s numbers or adjusting slightly up where appropriate, I still find Trump gaining roughly 48,905 in margin in these 53 counties, or more than double the margin between Biden and Trump statewide in 2020.
The best way to simplify a statewide race in Wisconsin is like this:
Dane and Milwaukee Counties vs. Everything Else
In Presidential, Gubernatorial, and U.S. Senate races, Democrats can’t win statewide unless they get overwhelming margins in Dane and Milwaukee Counties thanks to the GOP margin expansion taking place everywhere else (or trimming of Democrat margin in working-class union strongholds). This court race will vary quite a bit thanks to its status as an off-year election and the prominence of the various issues at hand (the media are making it a referendum on abortion, which has not gone well for Republicans in recent races). Still, the calculus is the same for both candidates – Crawford needs high margins in her strongholds, and Schimel needs to outrun them everywhere else and pray for low urban turnout (voter disinterest), especially in the minority precincts of Milwaukee.
Most Recent Elections
2023 Protasiewicz (D) +11.0%
2020 Karofsky (D) +10.5%
2019 Hagedorn (R) +0.5%
2018 Dallet (D) +11.5%
Party Registration
Wisconsin does not register voters by party. The best comp for Wisconsin is Iowa, which continues to build its GOP voter registration edge, suggesting similar shifts in the Badger State; however, party registration is the strongest predictor for presidential races and loses strength as races become more local.
What Crawford Must Do to Win
Crawford is in the driver’s seat for this race and needs to let the machine do its work. One of her greatest strengths is that she hails from Chippewa Falls, which is seated in Trump +22.9% Chippewa County in Northwest Wisconsin. Despite her radical left-wing positions, her allies have succeeded in painting her as “Midwestern nice” and grounded in folksy belief and decorum. That is likely to bring down some of the ferocious margins Schimel needs to override Dane and Milwaukee County, which aren’t made up of voters who feel they owe it to society to split their votes, especially when Trump presides over the nation and so-called abortion rights are up for debate.
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