Wisconsin Republicans Hit Their Vote Target, but Democrats Blew Past Theirs

Again and again, Republicans repeated their goal for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election on Tuesday: Get more than 60 percent of President Trump’s voters to back Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate, and they would win, flipping the court’s majority back to the right.

Judge Schimel hit his mark: He won 62 percent of Mr. Trump’s November total in the state. He drew more votes even than Justice Janet Protasiewicz had received in Wisconsin’s 2023 contest for the court, when she delivered an 11-point thumping to the conservative candidate. That was the last judicial race that Democrats had turned into a national cause.

The problem for Republicans this time was that Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate on Tuesday, won 78 percent of Vice President Kamala Harris’s vote total in Wisconsin — an astonishing figure for a spring election in an off year, and one that made a mockery of the bar the G.O.P. had set for itself.

This was an across-the-map thrashing: Judge Crawford’s percentage of the Harris vote was higher than Judge Schimel’s percentage of the Trump vote in every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties.

All told, Tuesday’s result was the inverse of what the state’s Democrats had faced in November, when the party turned out what it thought would be enough voters for Ms. Harris to win the state, only to get swamped by a far larger showing for Mr. Trump.

The turnout advantage for Judge Crawford was strongest in Wisconsin’s college towns and rural areas, where the Democratic Party’s organizational advantage is most pronounced.