Why AP called the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat for Democrat-backed Crawford

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This article was published 01/04/2025 (248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press declared that Dane County Judge Susan Crawford won a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court based on the large leads she built in the state’s population centers and Democratic strongholds. That outweighed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel’s leads in more Republican areas across the state.

Crawford’s victory allows liberal-leaning justices on the court to maintain their current 4-3 majority.

The AP only declares a winner once it can determine that a trailing candidate can’t close the gap and overtake the vote leader. It declared Crawford the winner at 10:16 p.m. EDT Tuesday, with roughly two-thirds of the estimated total vote counted.

The AP’s analysis of the race determined that the remaining votes to be counted throughout the state — particularly in the city of Milwaukee — greatly favored Crawford and closed off any path for Schimel to take the lead.

Although seats on the court are officially nonpartisan, Crawford had the backing of the state and national Democratic establishment. Schimel was the favorite of Republicans, winning an endorsement from President Donald Trump and getting sizable financial support from top Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Here’s a look at how the AP called this race:

CANDIDATES: Crawford vs. Schimel

POLL CLOSING TIME: 9 p.m. EDT

About the race

Liberal-leaning justices gained a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023 for the first time in 15 years. But the retirement announcement of a liberal justice last April gave conservatives an opportunity to retake the majority ahead of high-profile cases on abortion, unions, congressional district boundaries and voting rights.

The election is the first major indication of Wisconsin’s political climate since Trump carried the state and recaptured the White House in November. The race has gained national attention, with spending approaching $100 million, much of it from Musk and his affiliated political action committees.

In the 2023 Supreme Court race, Democrat-backed Janet Protasiewicz defeated Republican-backed former Justice Dan Kelly by an 11-percentage-point margin, 55% to 44%. The following year, Trump edged Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by a margin of 0.86 percentage points, the closest outcome of any state in the presidential election.

Why AP called the race

At the time the race was called, Crawford was outperforming Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over then-President Trump throughout the state, most notably in the most populous counties of Milwaukee and Dane, which is home to Madison.

Schimel, on the other hand, was underperforming Trump in almost every county in the state, including in the so-called WOW counties outside of Milwaukee — Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha — that successful Republican-backed candidates typically rely on to help offset Democratic advantages in urban areas. Schimel led Crawford in those three counties but fell short of the benchmarks set by Trump in his presidential campaigns.

Crawford had received more than three-quarters of the vote in the state’s most Democratic-friendly areas, far greater than Schimel’s lead over Crawford in the state’s most Republican areas.

As of Wednesday morning, Crawford had improved on Harris’ margins in all 72 of Wisconsin’s counties. In both Milwaukee and Dane counties, for example, Crawford’s margin of victory over Schimel was more than 10 percentage points higher than Harris’ margin over Trump in those counties in the presidential race.

A notable county-level result was in Brown, home to Green Bay, one of the state’s population centers that tends to favor Republicans in statewide elections. Schimel was comfortably ahead of Crawford in Brown after the initial release of votes, but Crawford eventually took a lead of more than 3 percentage points with almost all of the vote counted. Protasiewicz also carried the county over the conservative candidate in her 2023 Supreme Court race.

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Associated Press writer Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this story.