Early Vote Down 50% Compared to 2025 WI Supreme Court Race
Another liberal vs conservative contest, but so low profile it's almost sleepy.
UW-Madison student Madeleine Afonso presents identification to vote early in-person Friday, March 28, 2025, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
The tally of early votes in this year’s Supreme Court race is less than half what it was at the same point in last year’s record-breaking contest. From March 24 through April 5, 148,307 Wisconsinites cast early, in-person votes across for either conservative Wisconsin Appeals Judge Maria Lazar or liberal Wisconsin Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
On the Monday before last year’s nationally watched Supreme Court election between former Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel and now-Justice Susan Crawford, more than 361,000 early, in-person votes were cast. In that race, unlike this year’s, ideological control of the Supreme Court was up for grabs.
While the period for early voting is over, absentee ballots are still circulating in Wisconsin. All told, 324,396 absentee ballots, including the in-person votes, have been returned to county clerks. The total represents a 50 percent decline compared to the total of absentee ballots reported the day ahead of the 2025 Supreme Court election.
The 2025 court race broke the mold in notable ways. It set a new voter turnout record for an April election and eclipsed campaign spending records to become America’s most expensive judicial race in history. It even included a visit by billionaire Elon Musk to hand out million-dollar checks to encourage people to register to vote. Crawford defeated Schimel by around 10 percentage points.
This year’s Supreme Court race has been sleepy by comparison. While Taylor has consistently outraised and outspent Lazar, spending has come nowhere near last year’s levels. Marquette University Law School polls have shown most voters haven’t been dialed into the court race nearly as much as they were a year before.
The number of absentee and in-person voting ballots ahead of Tuesday’s election are actually more in line with data from the 2023 Supreme Court race between former conservative Justice Dan Kelly and now liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz. The day ahead of that election, a total of around 410,000 absentee ballots were reported by the Elections Commission. Of those, about 174,000 were cast in person. On election night, Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by about 10 percentage points.
The winner of Tuesday’s Supreme Court race will replace outgoing conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who opted against running for reelection in August. At the time, she told WisPolitics the conservative movement “needs to take stock of its failures,” referencing the 2023 and 2025 losses, and that the best path for her “fight for liberty” is not as a member of the court’s conservative minority.
Currently, liberals hold a 4-3 Supreme Court majority. If Lazar wins, that number remains the same. If Taylor wins, the liberal wing of the bench would grow to a 5-2 majority.
Early vote down by more than half compared to 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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