Crawford Was Ahead Through Entire Election

Susan Crawford. Photo courtesy of Crawford campaign.

There were so many Democratic voters anguishing about whether Susan Crawford would win the election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The unprecedented spending in the judicial race, estimated at $107 million, the most ever spent in a judicial election in U.S. history, seemed to give the Republican-supported candidate, Brad Schimel, a clear advantage, what with billionaire Elon Musk‘s massive spending — some $25 million — on the race.

But it turns out Crawford never trailed in the election. She was ahead in February, when she actually had the lead over Schimel in total campaign spending. And she remained ahead over the next eight weeks, even after Musk began his orgy of spending and President Donald Trump endorsed Schimel.

Republicans knew they were behind in the race and hoped that Musk’s money and Trump’s endorsement could turn that around. But it turns out Schimel’s high point in their internal polls was five points behind, 10 days before the election.

Crawford was never behind, a key insider for her campaign tells Urban Milwaukee. From the time the first ads for the campaign began, “we were never down,” the source says. Their polls, too, showed Schimel was never closer than five points, the source says. Which in a swing state like Wisconsin, is far behind.

It was Schimel’s idea to nationalize the race and he hoped to win 60% of the votes for Trump in November. That would be enough for him to win the election, his campaign estimated.

In fact he exceeded the mark, winning 62% of the Trump’s November total in the April election. There’s no doubt that the entrance of Musk and Trump into the race helped drive a Republican turnout. The problem was that it also helped drive the turnout of Democrats in the race and Crawford won 78% of the votes for Democrat Kamala Harris in November in Wisconsin. Remarkably, Crawford’s percentage of the Harris vote was higher than Schimel’s percentage of the Trump votes in all 72 counties in Wisconsin.

That difference could be seen even in the Republicans’ all-important WOW counties: Schimel got 71% in Waukesha, 71% in Ozaukee and 70% in Washington County of each county’s Republican vote in November while Crawford got 78%, 82% and 78% of the November Democratic vote in those respective counties.

Meanwhile Schimel managed to win just 25% of the vote in Milwaukee County and 18% of the vote in Dane County. He would have needed way more votes in Republican strongholds like the WOW counties to make up for those dismal margins in the state’s two most populous counties.

Schimel’s total votes would have been enough to the win the election had the turnout been 1.8 million as it was in 2023. But the entrance of Musk and Trump gave the election far more visibility and drama in Wisconsin, driving the turnout to a remarkable 2.3 million. Schimel got his wish, creating the most nationalized state judicial race in American history, and the result was a 10 point thrashing for him, with 1,063, 244 votes, to 1,301,128 for Crawford.