Early voting turnout indicates the April 7 Wisconsin Supreme Court election between Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar is drawing significantly less voter interest compared to a year ago.
As of Monday, 324,396 people have voted early in Wisconsin by mail or in-person absentee ballots. This marks a 50% decrease compared to the 693,981 early votes cast in all of last year's state Supreme Court race.
Watch: Early voting turnout drops sharply in Wisconsin Supreme Court race
Most early votes have come from the state's three biggest counties: Milwaukee, Dane, and Waukesha. While the overall pace of early voting is also down in these counties from a year ago, they account for 45% of the state's early voting numbers so far.
Flipping the court's balance is not at stake this year, but the election will determine who replaces conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who decided not to run again. A Marquette Law School Poll in late March showed more than half of voters were undecided about the race.
WisPolitics reports campaign spending this year is less than $10 million, which is down compared to the record spending in 2025. Judge Taylor and her Democratic backed supporters are outraising and outspending Judge Lazar and her Republican backed supporters.
The current race contrasts sharply with the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court contest between Republican-backed Brad Schimel and Democratic-backed Susan Crawford. That race captured state and national attention, with tech billionaire Elon Musk suggesting at a Green Bay rally a year ago that the fate of "Western Civilization" was at stake.
The 2025 contest broke all spending records for any Supreme Court race in the country, generating more than $100 million. Musk and his PAC contributed the largest amount in what became a battle of billionaires on both sides.
That money and attention generated a record voter turnout of more than 2.3 million voters. Crawford won 55% to 45%, keeping the court's liberal majority at 4-3.
While nearly 70% of Wisconsin voters preferred to cast their ballots on Election Day in 2025, the current early voting pattern suggests total voter turnout for 2026 will likely fall below last year's Supreme Court race and potentially others.
For comparison, Justice Janet Protasiewicz won by 10 percentage points in the 2023 race that generated 1.8 million votes. Justice Jill Karofsky won by 10 points in 2020 with 1.5 million votes, and Justice Hagedorn won in 2019 by less than one point with 1.2 million votes, which included an even higher percentage of Election Day voters that year.
This story was reported on-air by Charles Benson and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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