Why the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Matters for National Politics

On April 1, Wisconsin will hold a Supreme Court justice election to replace Democrat-backed retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley with either former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel or Democrat-backed Susan Crawford. While state Supreme Court races don’t usually have nationwide effects, this one could impact congressional maps and serve as an important bellwether for the Trump administration and post-Trump elections.

The most recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election was in April 2023, when Democrat-backed Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated Republican-backed candidate Daniel Kelly. The kicker wasn’t just that a Democrat-supported candidate won, but that she won by 11 points, 55.4%-44.4%, just a few months after Republican Sen. Ron Johnson won reelection in the midterms and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels lost by only 3.3 points.

Current polling suggests that the race will be closer than the 2023 contest. In a Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce poll conducted March 9-10 with 600 likely spring election voters, neither candidate held a lead, with the race split 47-47.

Another poll from Marquette University did not ask about voting intentions but found that name recognition was much higher for Schimel. Only 38% of registered voters said they had not heard enough about him to have an opinion, while 58% said the same of Crawford. Name recognition is especially important in the Supreme Court election because candidates will not have party affiliation next to their names, as the race is officially nonpartisan.

If Brad Schimel wins this election, it bodes well for public perceptions of the Trump administration and future elections when Trump is no longer on the ballot. An open question remains whether the Republican Party will be able to turn the first-time voters Trump brought in during 2016, as well as increased youth, working-class, and minority support in 2024, into reliable Republican votes. Whether the Republican party can maintain those voters will be seen in exit polls after this election.

Congressional Maps

In terms of hard policy, this election will also be important for the other 49 states because of congressional maps in Wisconsin.

Currently, six of the eight congressional representatives in Wisconsin are Republicans, while only two are Democrats. Only two of the state’s congressional seats were decided by less than 10 points in 2024, and both went to Republicans. This means that at best, Democrats can only win four out of the eight congressional seats, while Republicans can win six, even though the state is a 50-50 toss-up depending on the election.

After Protasiewicz won the 2023 Supreme Court election and flipped the Republican-controlled court to Democratic control, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the state legislative maps were unconstitutional because they were not “contiguous,” a requirement in the Wisconsin Constitution. This led to a redraw of the Wisconsin state legislative maps, reducing Republican-held seats in the state Assembly from 64 out of 99 in the 2022 elections to 54 out of 99 in the 2024 elections. Although not all state Senate seats were up for reelection in 2024, Republicans also saw their control in the Senate drop from 22 out of 33 seats to 18 out of 33.

If Brad Schimel wins on April 1, redrawing the congressional maps is completely off the table, as he will flip the court back to a majority of Republican-backed judges.

However, even if Crawford wins, it does not guarantee that Democratic lawyers will successfully lead an effort to get the current congressional maps overturned. A similar case was brought to the Supreme Court in 2024 seeking to have the congressional maps redrawn, but the court denied the motion to hear the case despite the majority being Democrat-backed judges.

This was in part because Janet Protasiewicz did not participate in the decision on whether to hear the case. Before the decision was made, Wisconsin Republicans filed a motion seeking Protasiewicz’s recusal over comments she had made about the maps being “rigged” before being elected. They said that this violated the 14th Amendment, arguing, “A justice cannot decide a case she has prejudged or when her participation otherwise creates a serious risk of actual bias.” Protasiewicz decided not to participate in the decision, so a recusal was not required.

This leaves the possibility that she could participate in future cases if they were brought to the court, as she did not recuse herself based on her prior statements that could have been perceived as prejudging the case. However, she could also choose to recuse herself in congressional redistricting cases even if Crawford wins, resulting in a 3-3 deadlock on the court, leading to no change in the current maps.

All of this is to say that even if Crawford wins, there is no guarantee the maps will be overturned. However, there is a chance, depending primarily on whether Protasiewicz recuses herself.