Liberals Gain Huge Victory In Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

Conservatives failed to show up at the polls in Wisconsin.

On Tuesday night, a Democrat defeated a conservative candidate in a special election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Democrat Chris Taylor defeated Conservative Maria Lazar in a race that was not close at all.

NBC News reported more on Taylor’s win and what it means:

Chris Taylor has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, expanding liberals’ majority in the key battleground state.

Taylor, a state appeals court judge and former Democratic state legislator, secured a 10-year term on the court over conservative Maria Lazar, an appeals court judge who worked in Republican former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration.

Taylor’s victory in the race for retiring Justice Rebecca Bradley’s seat means liberals will have a 5-2 edge on the swing state’s highest court, putting the majority out of reach for conservatives until at least 2030.

With most of the expected vote in, Taylor led Lazar by more than 20 points. That’s a 10-point swing toward the Democratic-backed side compared to the 2025 state Supreme Court race and a 21-point swing from the 2024 presidential contest in Wisconsin.

Liberal candidates have won four straight Wisconsin Supreme Court elections, as well as five of the last six. And dating to 2017, Democratic and Democratic-aligned candidates have won 19 of the last 24 statewide races in Wisconsin.

Taylor, who was backed by the state Democratic Party, held massive fundraising and ad spending advantages over Lazar throughout the race. She had put abortion and voting rights at the forefront of her campaign, much like other winning liberal Supreme Court candidates in the state in recent years. Taylor, a former policy director for the state’s Planned Parenthood group, also leaned into messaging that targeted President Donald Trump, which has helped turn out Democratic voters in non-presidential elections in Wisconsin and nationally.

The full results:

The New York Times reported a Democrat mayor was also able to defeat a Republican in a right-leaning suburb:

Voters in Waukesha, Wis., a Republican-leaning Milwaukee suburb, narrowly elected a Democrat as mayor on Tuesday, The Associated Press said.

Alicia Halvensleben, the Democratic president of the city’s Common Council, defeated State Representative Scott Allen, a Republican, a result that could signal a political shift in the suburbs and that continues a string of Trump-era mayoral wins for Democrats.

The election in Waukesha, population 71,000, was officially nonpartisan, and much of the campaign focused on local issues like budget challenges and housing prices.

But Ms. Halvensleben’s victory carried symbolic importance for her party as it looks ahead to competitive statewide races in November and seeks a political foothold in a Republican-dominated part of the state.

The city of Waukesha is the seat of Waukesha County, which has long been a center of conservative activism and has helped fuel statewide wins for Republicans in closely divided Wisconsin.

While Waukesha County continues to lean Republican, it has become more politically mixed over the last decade. President Trump’s margin of victory in Waukesha County has become smaller each time he has run, from 27 percentage points in 2016 to 20 points in 2024. The city of Waukesha’s current mayor, Shawn Reilly, left the Republican Party in 2021 and endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024. Mr. Reilly, an independent, did not seek re-election this year.