Creates open seat in one of the most competitive districts
Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, announced his retirement from the 53rd district on April 27th. He is the 11th member of the Assembly, and the 8th Republican, to announce they will not seek reelection. Three Assembly Democrats are seeking other offices, two for state Senate and one for Governor.
Kaufert is the only retiring Republican representative in a district Harris won in 2024. Kaufert won in 2024 by 364 votes, a 1.2 percentage point margin, while Harris won the district by 4.4 percentage points. Gov. Tony Evers carried it by 8.6 points in 2022 and Sen. Tammy Baldwin won it by 3.9 points that same year. (These past votes are calculated for the current district boundaries, following the 2024 redistricting.)
The district includes Neenah and Menasha, and part of Appleton, in northeastern Wisconsin.
The vote in the current 53rd district has been trending Democratic in recent years. From 2012 to 2016 Republicans won it in 2012 and 2014 governor races, and 2016 presidential and Senate races, though Obama and Baldwin won it in 2012. Since 2016 the district has voted Democratic in each of the major statewide races. Kaufert’s win in 2024 was an exceptional GOP victory.
The top Assembly seats for majority control include the 53rd plus four other seats Republicans narrowly won in 2024, each of which Harris also won. The Assembly is currently 54R-45D. The most competitive Democratic held seat is the 94th which Rep. Steve Doyle won in 2024 by 217 votes, 0.6 percentage points, while Trump carried the district by 2.1 points. The other three potentially competitive Democratic held seats were relatively close for both assembly and president but were Harris victories as well as Democratic Assembly wins.
As candidates are now circulating nomination papers for access to the ballot, the time for retirement announcements would seem to be drawing to a close. So far, the announced retirements have come in less competitive districts, with the exception of Kaufert’s decision today. Thus, the competition for the majority depends more on close seats with incumbent Republicans seeking reelection in Harris districts, plus the one split decision in a Democratic seat.
Consumer sentiment is far worse in 2nd term than in 1st
Analysts of President Donald Trump’s second term, and the outlook for the midterm elections on Nov. 3, have reasonably focused on Trump’s job approval. After holding above the first term approval trend, the second term approval fell below the first term in January and has recently fallen more after the start of the Iran war.
This is well known and I have nothing to add.
What is less often considered are opinions of the economy and especially the comparison of first and second term opinion. This deserves more attention.
The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment is a long-running monthly survey of how Americans feel about the economy. As an index, high values reflect optimism and positive feelings, low values show pessimism and negative feelings. An index value of 100 (where the index stood in 1966) reflects quite positive views of the economy including current conditions and future expectations. As an index, values can be above or below 100, i.e. this is not a percentage.
On April 10, the Michigan survey reported consumer sentiment at 47.6, a record low in polling dating back to 1952. Four of the 5 lowest values ever have come in the last 4 years, with two in the Biden administration in June and July 2022 at 50.0 and 51.5 respectively (at the peak of the inflation surge), and in November 2025 with an index at 51.0, in addition to the current all time low. The 5th lowest index ever was 51.7 in May 1980. In short, despite objective measures of GDP, unemployment and inflation having been far worse in some earlier years, Americans are stunningly sour on the economy,
The comparison of consumer sentiment in the first Trump administration and in the second is the point of this post. The chart highlights the first term up to the 2018 midterms and the second term so far. The average sentiment in the first 23 months of term 1 was 97.5. The average so far in term 2 is 55.5, with the most recent reading at 47.6. That is a 42 point drop from average to average and a 49.9 point drop from average to current reading.
To state the obvious: economic sentiment was a tremendous advantage in the first Trump term and is a tremendous burden in the second.
Sentiment plummeted when the Covid pandemic arrived in early 2020, then began to recover into 2021 before the spike in inflation in the second half of 2021 drove sentiment to the then all-time low of 50 in June 2022. Sentiment recovered somewhat through most of the 2nd half of the Biden administration though it dipped in the run-up to the 2024 election. That persistent negative view of the economy was a constant weight on Biden’s support and ultimately on Harris’ vote.
During Trump’s second term the trend has been sharply down from a peak of 74.0 in December 2024 immediately after his reelection, to 64.7 in the first month of the new term with irregular month to month movements and an overall downward trend.
The low consumer sentiment index means the economy is virtually guaranteed to remain the top concern for voters, and therefore the issue all candidates have to discuss (and claim to fix, with more or less persuasiveness). Above all, this economic gloom will be the atmosphere of the election.
Whatever Trump’s approval rating was in the first term, he could count on an electorate optimistic about the economy. In the second term economic pessimism can only be a drag on his approval and the fortunes of the Republican party in November.
Low consumer sentiment doesn’t guarantee big GOP seat losses in November. While it is correlated with seat loss the fit is quite loose. Presidential approval is a better predictor of seat loss. But economic concerns write the script for the 2026 election.
Let’s do take a moment to reiterate what all have said before: compare Trump approval in term 1 and term 2. While there has been steady decline in net approval in the second term, the first year of the first term was lower and reached what is still the lowest point of either term at -19.4. My estimate of the lowest net approval of the second term is -16.8 on April 6. As of April 9 the net approval estimate is -16.5. You can, of course, consult the many other websites on Substack and elsewhere for alternate estimates of the approval trends. These are mine. Some are a little better for Trump and some a little worse. We all tell the same qualitative story and show very similar bumps and wiggles.
I’ve added annotation for some significant events around the times of movement in approval. See Elliott Morris’s look at consequential events for Trump 2 approval at his Strength in NumbersSubstack. I have slightly different notable events based on my judgement rather than statistical fits.
In the first term approval fell around Trump’s effort to replace Obamacare, and continued down until the passage of the Ryan tax cut package in December 2017. After that, net approval rose until it stabilized at about -10 where it remained through the midterms.
In the second term so far, we’ve not seen a sustained recovery in net approval. After the negative reaction to “Liberation Day” tariffs, approval declined until Trump announced he was pausing the tariffs and negotiating. That bought back some approval points in the late spring, only to again start declining by June. Likewise the October government shutdown coincided with a drop in approval, with some recovery after the shutdown ended. The most recent period of decline has not seen a similar recovery period so far.
This is not to say there can be no approval recovery. We know not what events may occur over the next 207 days until the election. But we do know that inflation and the cost of living has been the most important problem in surveys since the inflation spike in 2021-22, and it has remained the number one problem throughout Trump’s second term. The vast difference in consumer sentiment in the second term compared to the first shows vividly that the economy is not the life preserver the president and his party seek.
Liberal Chris Taylor sweeps conservative Maria Lazar in Supreme Court race
In Wisconsin we have the historically crucial and very red WOW counties (Washington, Ozaukee, Waukesha) and the usually competitive BOW (Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago) and Lake Superior’s blue BAD (Bayfield, Ashland, Douglas) counties. This morning, add one more mnemonic trio.
In 2024, Donald Trump won 34 of 72 Wisconsin counties with 60% or more. On April 7th, 2026, the conservative Supreme Court candidate won only 3 counties by 60% or more: Washington, Taylor, Florence. The WTF counties.
The liberal candidate swept the BAD counties with over 60% in each, and all three BOW counties with 57%, 58% & 60% respectively. And the WOW counties split with 62% for the conservative in Washington (the highest in the state), 54% in Waukesha (a historically low share) while the liberal carried Ozaukee with 52% (Trump got 54% there in 2024.)
True to expectations, the liberal candidate dominated the MD counties (dare I call them DOC counties?) of Milwaukee and Dane with 76% and 84%. Together those two counties also provided 26% of the total statewide vote.
It all adds up to a 60.1% to 39.8% win for liberal Chris Taylor over conservative Maria Lazar, doubling the liberal margins seen in each of the previous three Court elections, which themselves were considered large margins in highly competitive Wisconsin.
Results are unofficial but nearly complete.
You can remember me from my mnemonic: PAV, PollsAndVotes.
Lots of turnover, but mostly in safe seats and across the ideological spectrum
(You can read my posts here or at my Substack. Both are, and forever will be, free)
As of 2026-03-11 there have been 56 members of the House of Representatives who have announced they will not seek reelection in 2026. That is well above recent years. At this time in 2024 42 had announced they would not seek reelection, as had 45 in 2022, 34 in 2020 and 46 in 2018.
Quite a few of these are seeking other offices. Sixteen are seeking a Senate seat, 11 are running for governor and 1 is a candidate for state attorney general. A total of 28 are retiring from politics.
While a large number of retirements (including those seeking other office) might seem to signal large seat changes in November, that is too hasty a conclusion to reach. It certainly speaks to the desirability of a House career (or lack of desirability) but most of these members are from pretty safe seats. Of the 35 retiring Republicans, only 4 won by 10 percentage points or less in 2024, and of the 21 retiring Democrats only 2 won by 10 points or less. (These are based on their 2024 districts, not new 2026 districts in those states that have redistricted in the last year.) So if most of these seats are likely to stay in the hands of the current party the greater number of Republican than Democratic retirements is unlikely to result in a significant gain of Democratic seats. A swing at the ballot box in November can certainly shift the party balance, but that will come predominantly among the closely contested seats, not from these more secure retirement seats.
There is a lot of ideological diversity in the retirements as well. Republican retirees range from the 3rd most moderate to the 2nd most conservative members of the GOP caucus and are spread pretty evenly across the Republican ideological spectrum. The same holds for Democratic retirees who range from the most moderate to not quite the most liberal. In neither party is ideological location nor 2024 vote margin significantly related to retirement, nor is age.
In short, retirements are all over the place and higher than in recent years but they aren’t coming from especially vulnerable seats or from members ideologically out of step with their party.
The chart shows all House members with retirees highlighted by solid dots. Along the horizontal axis is 2024 election margin from most Democratic to most Republican. The vertical axis shows ideology from most liberal at the bottom to most conservative at the top, based on analysis of roll call voting by each member.
The retirements do guarantee one thing about the House in 2027: regardless of election defeats in November there will be a lot of new faces next January. Change in the party and ideological balance, though, will come more from the ballot box than from retirements.
Democrats must virtually run the table of competitive races to win a majority of seats
The redistricting of 2024 created a more competitive landscape for Wisconsin Democrats in the state Assembly. However, Republicans held on to the majority in 2024, winning 54 seats to 45 for Democrats. Prior to redistricting, in 2022 Republicans held 64 seats to 35 for Democrats. The ten seat swing has put the chamber in competitive territory for the first time since 2010, but Democrats must pick up five more seats to take the majority. To do that they must virtually run the table of competitive races.
The 2024 district lines, drawn from a plan of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, made substantial changes to the 2022 lines, which were in turn very similar to the 2011 map adopted by the Republican trifecta under Gov. Scott Walker. The new maps have a more nearly even party balance given the voting history of the districts, with a slight Republican lean. The figure shows how each of the 99 districts has voted in 13 statewide races since 2012, plus the outcome of the 2024 Assembly election. Each open circle is a statewide race and the solid dots are the 2024 Assembly vote.
Districts are ordered by the number of Democratic victories in the 14 races, and by average Democratic minus Republican margin within the number of Democratic wins. There are 38 seats that have been won only by Republicans since 2012, and 35 that only Democrats have won. The potentially competive seats that have had mixed partisan outcomes amount to 26 districts, just over a quarter of the Assembly.
These mixed outcome seats produced 16 Republican wins and 10 for Democrats in 2024 under the new maps.
The next figure zooms in on just the mixed outcome seats. The asterisks mark the 9 seats that seem to potentially be the most competitive. Challengers, and potential incumbent retirements, are not yet clear across the races, so this analysis is simply looking at the voting history in these district.
Five of the nine most competitive seats are held by Republicans, with 4 Democrats. The table shows these seats and recent outcomes, sorted by Assembly vote margin in 2024. None won by as much as 3.5 percentage points, and all five Republicans are from districts Kamala Harris won in 2024, while one Democrat’s district was won by Donald Trump. On actual vote margin, all nine won by less than 1,200 votes.
Four of the five Republicans are from districts that voted for the Democrat for president in 2024 and for governor and U.S. Senate in 2022. One Republican district voted Republican for the Senate but Democratic in the other recent races. One Democrat is from a Trump district which split the 2022 vote, Democrat for governor but Republican for Senate. The other three Democrats are from districts with consistent Democratic majorities recently.Despite their somewhat Democratic leaning districts, each of these Republicans won in 2024. The Republican with the most challenging district, Todd Novak, in fact won with the largest margin of any of these races. Novak has successfully held a Democratic leaning district under the previous district lines as well. A reminder that candidates can win even in less congenial settings.
Some of these districts have been shifting over time, putting incumbents more at risk. The next figure shows how each district has voted since 2012, with the 2024 Assembly vote highlighted for comparison.
Four of the Republican seats have an obvious shift towards the Democrats over time: the 21st-Rodriguez, the 53rd-Kaufert, the 61st-Donovan, and the 88th-Franklin. Novak’s 51st is quite Democratic but hasn’t trended up or down since 2012. Based on the statewide races and trends, Franklin has the most competitive seat, while the other four Republicans are at significant disadvantage. Yet they each outperformed their party in 2024. Franklin’s extremely close race was still slightly better than Trump’s performance.
Of the Democrats, none of the districts are trending in a Republican direction, with all moving at least somewhat more Democratic. These Democratic incumbents closely matched Harris in 2024, while Doyle in the 94th did just enough better to win despite a 2-point Trump win. Whereas the Republican incumbents all outperformed their party, the Democrats fell a bit below where the partisan trend in their districts would expect.
Given the lean and trends in the districts, these five Republicans each face uphill battles in 2026, especially if they should draw strong Democratic challengers. Their incumbency advantage will be put to the test. For the Democrats, they have lagged their party a bit but don’t face hostile partisan environments.
Why not some other races?
The other districts that have a history of mixed-party outcomes could produce some competitive races in 2026, but their partisan environments are much less likely to flip a seat. The next figure shows the other 19 seats with mixed histories. Note the vertical scale is about twice as large as the previous figure, a tip-off that these are overall much less competitive seats even if they once in a while vote for both parties in statewide races.
Only a few of these suggest close districts, and none reveal a clear mismatch of incumbent and partisan lean. The ones that bear attention include Zimmerman in the 31st, Snyder in the 85th and Moses in the 92nd. Recent elections in Zimmerman’s seat have been close, with a slight Republican advantage, one that Zimmerman overperformed a little in 2024. Snyder’s 85th has a slight trend in a Democratic direction, though recent statewide races have all be close, with Snyder overperforming a bit. The 92nd, with Moses, shows a consistently close district with no trend up or down. Close enough to be potentially competitive in 2026.
Of the Democratic incumbents in the figure, Palmeri in the 54th somewhat underperformed in a pretty solidly Democratic district that shows no signs of moving toward the GOP. Likewise, Rivera-Wagner had a closer 2024 race than partisan patterns would suggest. In both these cases the significant partisan lean of the districts make it seem unlikely these would be good Republican pick-up opportunities.
The table shows these three Republican “maybe” seats, in the same format as above for the top races. While average margins have been relatively tight, only Gov. Tony Evers has managed to eke out two Democratic wins recently, and those by tiny margins. If incumbents retire, these might be Democratic pick up opportunities, but with a need for both good candidates and favorable national and statewide forces.
Bottom line
While Democrats have a shot at the Assembly majority, to do so they need to flip five Republican seats and not lose any current Democratic seats. The five Republican incumbents in the most competitive districts could provide those seats, though Doyle’s 94th district is a tough one for Democrats to hold on to. There could potentially be a close race in the “maybe” category of districts, but they are close districts with small GOP tilts. Possible retirements and quality of challengers will also make these races more (or less) competitive. There are also national and state level forces at play which favored Democrats in the 2025 elections elsewhere in the country. In short, the Democrats need a good year to run the table in competitive districts, and Republicans have a decent chance of preventing that given their candidates’ overperformances in the 2024 Assembly races.
With 4 top races, Democrats need 3 wins to gain the majority
The Wisconsin state Senate is up for grabs in 2026, for the first time since 2012. There are four seats widely seen as the top competitive races, three held by Republican incumbents and one by a Democrat.
On January 22, one of those Republicans, Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield in the 5th district, announced he will not seek reelection. State Assembly Rep. Robyn Vining, D-Wauwatosa and community advocate Sarah Harrison have announced candidacies. The State Senate Democratic Committee has endorsed Vining.
Hutton’s district in a suburban area west of Milwaukee, in eastern Waukesha county. Yes, crucial Waukesha county.
In the Senate, three Republicans hold seats that Democrat Kamala Harris won in 2024, one of those held by Hutton. No Democratic incumbent holds a seat that Republican Donald Trump won in 2024. One Democratic incumbent holds a seat that was narrowly won by Harris. These four seats are widely seen as the top races in 2026. Hutton’s retirement can only make the race for the 5th more of a Democratic pickup opportunity.
The table lists these incumbents, their districts and the 2024 presidential vote margin, as well as cash on hand as of Dec. 31st. The 2026 Wisconsin Senate races are those in odd numbered districts. These senators did not face election in 2024 in their new districts. For that reason we measure competitiveness by the presidential vote margin in 2024 and any split between the incumbent’s party and the party of the presidential winner in that new district.
In 2024, Harris won SD5 by 6 percentage points, making it easily the most lopsided of the four battleground seats. The other two split outcome Republican seats were won by Harris by just 1 point each. The Democratic held seat, the 31st, was won by Harris by 2 points. That district will pit two incumbents against one another in 2026, with Sen. Jesse James choosing to give up his quite safe 23rd district to run against Jeff Smith in the close 31st.
All past votes in this analysis are votes for statewide candidates within the current district lines. This allows comparison of voting trends since 2012 for the current district boundaries. This makes it clear that the districts designed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the 2024 redistricting have put all three Republicans in newly challenging districts. The figure shows the votes for statewide races since 2012 in the new district boundaries.
In Hutton’s 5th there has been a very strong movement away from GOP majorities to moderate Democratic wins since 2020. Marklein’s new 17th district has been strongly Democratic since 2012, though with a close Harris win in 2024. Marklein brings a large war chest to the race, in which he is facing Democratic Assembly Rep. Jenna Jacobson, D-Oregon. Wanggaard’s 21st has also drifted Democratic, though not so much as the 5th. (As of Jan. 22, Wanggaard has not announced his decision on seeking reelection.) Smith’s 31st is fairly Democratic in all elections since 2016, with a somewhat close Harris win in 2024. Large liberal margins in the 2025 Supreme Court race stand out in each of the 4 districts, though that race was more lopsided statewide than any other except the 2018 U.S. Senate election.
Given the close presidential margins in the 17th and 21st, it is plausible that incumbent Republicans could hold these seats, though the past voting record in the 17th is especially challenging.
Republicans currently have an 18-15 majority in the Senate, so Democrats have to win at least three of these four races to pick up a narrow majority.
While a substantial number of members of the House of Representatives are retiring, don’t expect these retirements to produce many flipped seats or shifts in the ideological makeup of either party.
As of January 13, 47 members of the House have announced their retirement, 21 Democrats and 26 Republicans. (I’m not counting resignations by Majorie Taylor Greene and Mikie Sherrill whose seats will be filled with special elections this year.)
The retirement rate has been running a bit ahead of recent cycles as of this date, which were 42, 34, 41, and 40 from 2018 to 2024. Still, I don’t think we are seeing extraordinarily high levels of retirements, as some commentary suggests. In the end those previous four cycles produced totals of 52, 36, 49 and 45 retirements, suggesting we may end up in the mid-to-upper 50s this year. Past retirements are from Ballotpedia.org.
The main point I want to make here is that the retirements are spread pretty widely throughout both Republican and Democratic caucuses by ideology and 2024 vote margin. The solid dots are retiring members. These are not endangered incumbents who barely scraped by in 2024, nor are they ideological outliers relative to their caucuses.
The figure shows all House members by vote margin and by left-right ideology, using Nokken-Poole dimension 1 ideology scores from VoteView.com. These scores are based on roll call votes by the members. Nokken-Poole is a variant of the widely used Nominate scores. Nokken-Poole scores range from -0.848 for the most liberal member to 0.986 for the most conservative member. Vote margin is the percentage for the Republican candidate minus the percentage for the Democrat, so negative margins are Democratic wins and positive ones are Republican victories.
Among Republicans, the median 2024 vote margin is 28.2 percentage points, and the median for retiring Republicans is 26.1 points. On ideology, the median Nokken-Poole score is 0.542 (higher scores are more conservative.) Among retiring Republicans the median is 0.581
Democratic retirees have somewhat larger vote margins, -36.8 percentage points, than their caucus as a whole, -27.0 points. On ideology, the retiring Democrats are also more liberal, -0.461, than the full Democratic caucus, -0.394. These are modest differences, however, and the figure makes clear retirements are well scattered throughout both caucuses.
The upshot of this distribution of retirements is that it does not open up many opportunities for turnover as most retirees enjoyed reasonably secure margins in 2024. Nor are retirements likely to significantly shift the ideological balance in the House given that retirees are ideologically pretty representative of their caucuses. While open races are less predictable than incumbent ones, the strong partisan lean of most of these districts means we should expect no more than a handful of these seats to potentially flip.
DCCC and NRCC target districts
Both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committe (DCCC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) have released lists of districts being targeted as pick up opportunities. Compare this figure with the retirements above. The targeted districts are, as you would expect, far more concentrated in races that were narrowly decided in 2024. (These lists were released by the NRCC on March 17, and by the DCCC on April 8. They do not include changes or additions after some states redistricted in 2025. These are the members’ districts in the 119th congress.)
Republicans on the DCCC list have a median vote margin of 6.8 percentage points, much closer than the caucus median of 28.2 points. They are also less conservative, 0.384, than the full caucus, 0.542.
Democrats on the NRCC list also had much closer 2024 races, with a median of -3.2 percentage points compared to -27.0 for the full caucus. These Democrats are also less liberal than the caucus, with a median Nokken-Poole score of -0.221 compared to the caucus median of -0.394.
If you are looking for change in the House, look at the districts each of the parties are focusing on. They have a much greater chance of flipping than the seats of retiring members, and would be more likely to remove relatively moderate members of either party. The latter fact will also contribute to polarization in the House. Rather than target ideologically extreme members of the opposition party, both Democats and Republicans target close races, which also happen to be where the most relatively moderate members are.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections were once low-key, low-turnout April affairs. Not so much any more. In 2023 total spending on the court race reached $50 million. Two years later, in 2025, total spending doubled that, passing $100 million. The big spending reflects the stakes in a shifting majority on the court. In the 2019-20 term, conservatives held a 5-2 majority. In 2020 liberals narrowed the conservative majority to 4-3. After the 2023 election it became a 4-3 liberal majority, which was maintained in 2025. With a retiring conservative justice, the 2026 election can either hold the 4-3 liberal majority or increase it to 5-2 for the 2026-27 term. (The seven justices are elected to 10 year terms.)
This recent shift contrasts with consistent conservative majorities from 1995 until the recent shifts. The figure shows the results of court elections since 1995. From 1995 through 2003 conservatives won 5 elections to 2 for liberals. From 2005 to 2013 conservatives again won 5 elections to 2 for liberals. But since 2015 liberals have won 5 seats to 3 for conservatives.
Since the 1990s Wisconsin Supreme Court elections have become far more partisan with voting patterns coming to be strongly linked to partisan elections and with the parties endorsing and financially supporting candidates in the formally non-partisan court races.
The next figure shows this changing partisan structure to court voting. As an example, I use Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who won in 1995 and 2015 before retiring in 2025. (In 2005 she ran unopposed.) In 1995, there was a moderate correlation, .45, between how counties voted for the court race and how they voted in the previous presidential race. But by 2015, the correlation between Bradley’s vote and the 2012 presidential vote had risen to .78. In 2025 when Bradley retired, the correlation for liberal Susan Crawford with the 2024 presidential vote was an astonishing .99. This reflects the surge in party polarization in Wisconsin and the emergence of court races more tightly tied to partisan divisions.
This increase in partisan voting structure is not a sudden phenomena, but one which has grown steadily since the 1990s. In the 1970s and 1980s there was little partisan structure to court elections. Indeed, in 1978 the correlation was nil, .002. This rose sporadically in the 1990s, then grew steadily since 2007 to the current astonishingly high .99 of 2025.
This extremely high correlation doesn’t mean outcomes are locked in. Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative, won in 2019 by less than a 1 percentage point margin, with a correlation of .92 with the 2016 outcome, while Justice Rebecca Dallet, a liberal, won the year before with a 10 point margin and a correlation of .89 with the same 2016 presidential race. If all counties shift their votes up or down by the same amount, the correlation remains high though the outcome can shift, as in these two cases. Correlation tells us about the structure of the votes but not where the majority necessarily falls. What we have now is that the most Republican counties are now virtually certain to also be the most conservative in their court votes and the most Democratic counties the most liberal. That wasn’t the case before the 1990s when knowing a county’s presidential vote told us very little about their court vote.
The April 2026 election is likely to reflect this strong partisan structure of voting, though we can’t yet say if the net election forces will shift in the liberal or conservative direction.
The geography of the court vote has shifted dramatically over 30 years. In 1995, liberal Justice Bradley won with 55% of the vote. In 2025, liberal Justice Crawford replaced the retiring Bradley with a nearly identical 55% of the vote. But the sources of these two victories was dramatically different. In 1995, Bradley was strongly supported in the north, north-central, and southwestern parts of the state. Notably her vote was significantly less in Brown, Dane and Milwaukee counties. In 2025, Crawford lost badly in the north, north-central and most of the southeast, while she ran up large margins in Dane and Milwaukee, much more than Bradley’s 1995 totals in those counties. She also ran a little ahead in Brown, a county Bradley had lost badly in 1995. The maps shows how dramatically the geography of the vote has shifted even with identical vote margins in the two races.
With so much of the state shifting from blue to red, how is it that the vote margin is unchanged? Democratic gains have been large and come in counties with large populations. Republican gains are widespread but mostly in less populous counties. In large Republican leaning counties, Waukesha, for example, the conservative majority has increased but only slightly, with a larger increase in Washington, but a slight decrease in Ozaukee. Republicans have gained in Marathon, but the conservative margin is only moderate.In contrast, Dane has gone from pretty liberal to overwhelmingly liberal, and Milwaukee which was quite competitive has also become very liberal in its court vote. These shifts also highlight the greater geographic polarization in the 2020s compared to the 1990s, while not shifting the statewide balance at all.
Public opinion
Since 2023 the Wisconsin Supreme Court has held a consistent net approval rating, though about 15% say they don’t have an opinion. Court approval slightly improved during and after the 2025 court election, declining slightly in October.
As of October, the candidates for the court in 2026 were little known to the public. This is not unusual in court elections and especially so with no incumbent. The Marquette Law School poll in October asked registered voters if they had a clear idea what the candidates stand for. For both candidates, 69% said they hadn’t heard enough, and only 10% or 11% said they did have a clear idea. With less than 3 months left before the April election, the campaigns have a lot of messaging to do.
Voters have a strong preference that candidates for the court discuss issues so voters know what they stand for, 83%, while only 17% say candidates should avoid discussing issues so as to not appear to have prejudged issues. On this, partisans and independents are in agreement.
The balance of the court
With the current balance of the court, and the justices coming up for election in the next 10 years, the liberal majority is assured until at least 2028. Should the liberal candidate win in 2026 the majority will remain in liberal hands until at least 2030 (absent an unscheduled vacancy occuring.)
After more than two decades of conservative majorities, the liberal victories in five of the last eight court elections has altered the balance, and created the prospect for continued majorities well into the 2020s or beyond.
The shifting balance of the court since 2019 is shown in the table below.
And for those who want way more detail (you know who you are), here are all Wisconsin Supreme Court elections since 1976. My ideological classification of justices may be debatable in some cases prior to 2000. In those less partisan times ideology played less of a role and moderate justices may be mislabled. The distinctions since 1995 are much more clear, though note that Hagedorn was elected as a conservative candidate but does not align strongly with either the liberal or conservative wings of the court in his decisions, siding with conservatives a little more than half the time in some terms and a little more than half with liberals in other terms. See the excellent SCOWstats.com for detailed analysis of court alignments since 1918.
On January 8, the House passed a bill to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years. Despite leadership opposition, 17 Republicans voted for the extension, a notable break with the party majority. An additional 5 Republicans did not vote. The bill’s prospects in the Senate are unclear as negotiations in that chamber continue.
Those Republicans voting for the bill had closer elections in 2024, and are less conservative than the GOP caucus as a whole. The Republicans who did not vote had larger 2024 vote margins and are somewhat more conservative than those who voted for the bill. The figure shows all members of the House. Those voting Yea are solid circles, Nays are open circles and non-voters are solid triangles. All Democrats voted for the bill.
For Wisconsin readers (and The Downballot fans like me) I’ve highlighted Derrick Van Orden, WI03, the only Republican from Wisconsin voting for passage. Van Orden won by the smallest margin (2.7 percentage points) of Republican House members in the state in 2024, and is a target for Democrats’ efforts to win the House in 2026. As with others voting to extend the tax credits, Van Orden is less conservative than the GOP caucus and had a close 2024 race.
The table shows all Republicans who voted for the tax credit extension, and those who did not vote.
The geography of GOP defectors is interesting, especially three from New York (all in the south), three from Pennsylvania (all in the east) and three from Ohio (northeast and central). Also notable is the lack of defections through most of the south and west. (Credit the map to VoteView.com) (In the map OH15 looks like 2 districts because it has a very narrow waist connecting the east and west lobes of the district.)
Seventeen defectors hardly amounts to outright rebellion, though with the extraordinarily narrow GOP majority it easily swings the outcome of the roll call. These members have good reason to be concerned about their reelection prospects in November, and do not come from the most conservative wing of their party. Whether any suffer consequences from the leadership or the White House remains to be seen. When party unity has been so strong through 2025, this departure signals that members have concerns for voter reaction that can overcome party loyalty on some issues.
We also saw five Senate Republicans defect to advance a war powers resolution on January 8. And 35 Republicans voted to override Trump’s veto of a Colorado water project, with 24 voting to override a veto concerning tribal lands in Florida. While limited, this is more pushback from congressional Republicans than the Trump administration saw in the first year back in power.
The cost of living, or “affordability”, is at the top of public concerns likely to shape the 2026 elections. Let’s look back over the last decade for some perspective.
For the past 10 years my Marquette Law School Poll has asked Wisconsin registered voters about their family’s financial situation:
Thinking about your family’s financial situation, would you say you are living comfortably, just getting by, or struggling to make ends meet?
The percentage saying they were living comfortably rose steadily during the first Trump administration, from around 50% in 2016 to over 60% by 2020. But as inflation rose in 2021 the trend reversed, falling to 44% near the end of the Biden administration in late 2024. In the first year of the second Trump term the percentage living comfortably has turned up modestly, standing at 50% as of October.
Those who say they are just getting by reverse the pattern for those living comfortably, declining from 2016-20, rising from 2021-24, with a slight downturn in 2025. Those struggling also move in rough parallel with those just getting by.
The decline in financial well-being during the Biden administration goes a long way to explaining Biden’s low approval rating during the last three years of his administration and Trump’s ability to win Wisconsin in 2024 by 0.9 percentage points, after having lost the state by 0.6 points in 2020.
The upturn in financial situation in 2025 contrasts with continued worries about inflation and the cost of living, which was the most cited problem in the October Marquette poll, at 27%, with an additional 9% citing the economy as most important. These concerns are substantial across the usual partisan lines: 23% of Republicans rank inflation as most important, as do 27% of independents and 32% of Democrats. Only Republicans rank another issue higher, immigration, at 31%.
What lies behind the changing sense of financial security or insecurity over the past decade? Partisanship plays a big role, as does income.
Family finances by party identification
The upturn in sense of living comfortably in 2025 is entirely due to Republicans who turned sharply more positive with the change of administration in January. By the end of the Biden administration only about 34% of Republicans said they were living comfortably, but by October this had soared to 63%.
In contrast, independents living comfortably declined throughout the Biden administration and show no upturn in 2025. Democrats viewed their financial situation as stable through the Biden years with a substantial downturn in 2025.
There is no evidence these changes in perceived financial situation reflect real fluctuations in income. In 2024, 37% of Republicans reported family incomes over $100,000, and 37% had that income in 2025. For independents, 28% had this level of income in both 2024 and 2025. Slightly more Democrats had incomes over $100,000 in 2025, 34%, than the 32% in 2024.
Family finances by income
This powerful effect of partisanship does not mean money doesn’t matter. Those living comfortably rises with income while those struggling goes down as income rises. More important is the changing sense of well-being over time and especially during the Biden years. Across each income level the percentage living comfortably fell during Biden’s term after rising during Trump’s first term. Those struggling declined or was flat during Trump’s first term but rose under Biden, especially for lower income families, though also for those of middle-income. For the high income group a decline in living comfortably translated into a rise in the feeling of just getting by. In 2025 all income groups show at least a small increase in sense of living comfortably and a downturn in those saying they are struggling.
Family finances by party ID and by income
We can disentangle the income and partisan effects a bit by looking at both simultaneously. Republicans, regardless of income, showed declining financial well-being throughout Biden’s term and have shown an improved outlook in 2025. (The data here are aggregated by year to provide enough cases to reliably estimate both partisan and income effects simultaneously.)
Both low- and high-income independents had declining finances in 2021-24 and continued down in 2025. Middle-income independents seem a bit better off in 2024 and 2025 than earlier in Biden’s term.
Low- and high-income Democrats held stable in their sense of family finances under Biden, with both dropping off a bit in 2025 under Trump. This contrasts with middle-income Democrats who felt increasingly worse off under Biden and are continuing down under Trump.
Not to be missed in all these details is that among Republicans and independents every income group felt their financial situation was better during Trump’s first term than during Biden’s. Democrats were more stable during the Biden years, with the important exception of middle-income Democrats who felt increasingly worse off.
Finances, party and the vote
The sage said, “it’s the economy, stupid” and this seems to hold up today as it did in the 1990s. If not the only thing that matters, these shifts in financial security from 2021-24 surely go a long way to pointing us to crucial groups who found themselves feeling worse off in 2024 than in 2020. This was especially true for middle-income people who reported being less secure regardless of party by 2024. For Republicans this reinforced their partisan inclinations while for Democrats greater insecurity is associated with a modest increase in votes for Trump, and likely reduced turnout: among Democrats living comfortably, 96% said they were certain to vote in 2024, while among those struggling 86% said the same. Turnout increased slightly for struggling Republicans vs comfortable ones, while turnout was lower for struggling independents than those living comfortably.
Voting for Trump was higher in 2024 for those struggling compared to the comfortable across parties, with modest differences among Republicans and Democrats but a large 40-point increase for Trump among struggling independents vs. comfortable ones.
The lesson for 2026 and beyond: “it’s the economy, stupid”.
