MADISON, Wis. — Yesterday, WPR reported on Democrats’ massive win in Tuesday night’s Supreme Court election, highlighting how Republicans lost ground in their reliable conservative counties while Democrats increased their margins in their strongholds. Judge Chris Taylor’s win set a record with 84% of the vote in Dane County, defeating Maria Lazar by over 20 points—an upset so high that Republicans are back on their heels and scrambling to figure out how to recover 71 of the 72 counties that shifted away from the GOP and its extremist platform. This includes 19 counties, 18 of which are rural, that flipped from red to blue.

WPR: Liberals dominated Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race. Will it carry over to November?
By: Shawn Johnson | 4/08/26

Liberal Justice-elect Chris Taylor’s win in Tuesday’s Supreme Court election was so lopsided that political observers had lots of ideas for what to call it: a landslide, a romp, an outlier — and possibly a harbinger, with the caveat that this is Wisconsin, and things can change fast here.

Labels aside, Taylor’s dominant victory continued two trends that have now spanned multiple elections. Liberals can’t seem to lose statewide judicial races in Wisconsin. And, as the November midterms draw near, the pendulum keeps swinging in Democrats’ direction.

“The president and his party should be freaking out,” said longtime Democratic consultant Joe Zepecki, pointing to election results in both Wisconsin and Georgia on Tuesday. “They have lost their political mojo with a little over 200 days to go until the midterm elections. This should be a five-alarm fire for Republicans.”

Around a million more people will vote in November, Republicans counter, including some who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 but stay home in these court races.

Taylor, a state appeals judge and former Democratic state lawmaker from Madison, defeated conservative Judge Maria Lazar by 20 percentage points Tuesday, growing the liberal majority on the court from 4-3 to 5-2. She dominated in deep blue counties, and flipped red counties that were once considered foundations of the GOP’s base.

Here are some of the big takeaways.

This blowout was about as big as they come in Wisconsin

In a state where elections are routinely decided by a single percentage point or less, a victory like Taylor’s is something you just don’t see very often.

“It’s maybe not a surprise that the liberal won, given the recent track record,” said Marquette University pollster Charles Franklin. “But the size of that margin really is very striking.”

Even in Supreme Court races, where liberals have now won double-digit victories in the last four elections, in percentage terms Taylor’s win stood head-and-shoulders above the rest.

[…]

But unofficial turnout still hit 32 percent Tuesday, one of the highest figures of the past two decades.

“What this tells me,” Zepecki said, “is that the Democratic base is so fired up and ready to vote that you don’t need to spend $50 or $75 or $100 million to let them know they have an opportunity to go and express their outrage at what’s happening in Washington, D.C. at the ballot box.”

The Trump coalition sat this one out

In 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris won just 13 Wisconsin counties. In 2025, liberal Justice Susan Crawford won 23. And Tuesday, according to unofficial totals from the Associated Press, Taylor won 42.

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The ‘WOW’ counties were once a deep red bloc. This year, the ‘O’ went blue.

A decade ago, when conservatives held a Supreme Court majority that felt like it could last forever, they owed much of their success to suburban voters, especially in the vaunted “WOW” counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington.

On Tuesday, Ozaukee County went blue, a milestone in Wisconsin politics.

Ozaukee is the smallest of the three WOW counties and has been slowly trending blue in court races and other statewide contests. 

Notably, Waukesha County, the biggest of the three, also veered in liberals’ direction, with Taylor winning 46 percent of the vote and Lazar winning just 54 percent.

“That’s a nearly unheard of low performance” by Lazar, said Franklin.

[…]

Dane County reaches new heights

Taylor received a whopping 84 percent of the vote in Dane County, meaning Lazar received just 16 percent.

“Which is the worst ever for a conservative candidate,” [Bill] McCoshen said. “Sixteen percent is literally the worst any statewide Republican or conservative candidate has ever done in Dane County.”

[…]

In November, McCoshen said Dane County could run up the score and make it hard for Republicans to catch up. It didn’t matter as much Tuesday, when Taylor was up so big she could have won without Dane County.

[…]