2025 Wisconsin spring election; analyzing historic voter turnout

MILWAUKEE - Liberal Susan Crawford received the most votes for a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin in the April 1 spring general election, meaning the state Supreme Court will stay in liberal hands for at least 3 years.

Conservative Brad Schimel won the second most votes in history.

Major turnout

What we know:

2025 set a Wisconsin record for Supreme Court turnout.

Roughly 52% of Wisconsinites of voting age cast ballots. That’s about 12 points higher than the last record, in 2023.

The race's $100 million in campaign spending shattered the national record for a court race.

Elon Musk impact?

Big picture view:

Elon Musk and two Musk-linked groups invested more than $20 million in support of Schimel.

SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News

Democratic billionaire George Soros helped Crawford with $2 million and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker helped with $1.5 million.

"This was a thumping in 72 counties. Susan Crawford got a higher percentage of the vote than Kamala Harris did in November. And so I think what that tells us is Elon Musk's millions cannot save Republicans from how unpopular the Trump agenda is," Democratic political strategist Joe Zepecki said.

"I don’t really see this as a referendum on Trump. I think this really come down to the involvement of these outside groups and Elon Musk, and I think the same could be said of the left," said Jake Curtis with Institute for Reforming Government. "Clearly, Elon Musk had an impact on this race. It’s an interesting dichotomy, though, because he obviously needed the support from somebody like Musk because of all the money coming in from Soros, Pritzker and from progressive national leaders."

"I hope Elon Musk stays extremely involved in Republican politics," Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said.

By county

By the numbers:

Crawford won in places across the state like Kenosha County, that has sided with the winner of the last four Supreme Court races.

Racine County voted for conservative candidates in recent elections, but last night, that flipped to Crawford.

Democratic strongholds like Milwaukee County saw explosive turnout – 70,000 more people voted on Tuesday night than in 2023.

In Waukesha County, Schimel's home county, voter turnout was also up. But he won 58% – that's 10 percentage points less than conservative Brian Hagedorn when he won the state in 2019.

"Democrats are back," Wikler said.

Campaign strategy

What they're saying:

Curtis said to win Supreme Court races, conservative campaigns need to start focusing on issues like what would happen if the Supreme Court overturned Act 10 or school vouchers.

"I think there needs to be a reevaluation of this playbook we, the conservative movement in the state, have been using," he said. "Those are the issues that I think this campaign should have focused on and that really never came out. All we saw, and frankly, I think voters get sick of this, this back and forth related to: he was light on sentencing, she was light on sentencing. She’s soft on crime, he’s soft on crime, which is ironic when you look at Judge Schimel's previous experiences as a District Attorney and Attorney General."

FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX LOCAL Mobile app for iOS or Android

"63% of Wisconsin voters supported that but at the same time they supported a very progressive candidate that spent some of her career fighting against voter ID," Curtis said. "So, there was this real disconnect."

"Republicans want to claim a victory in further establishing something that has been Wisconsin law for a decade or more," Zepecki said. "Have at it, but they had to look pretty hard for any signs of life last night."

ElectionWisconsinNews