The Daily Kos Elections county-by-county guide to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election

On Monday evening, we’re expecting the somewhat-delayed results for last Tuesday’s pivotal state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. Since that’s the main event to watch as results come in, starting 4 PM local time (5 PM on the east coast, 2 pm Pacific time), we’ve put together benchmarks to show you what progressive candidates, Judge Jill Karofsky, needs to be hitting in each county to be on track to unseat conservative incumbent Justice Dan Kelly.

While the race is officially nonpartisan, Karofsky has the support of state Democrats and progressive groups, including Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Kelly, meanwhile, was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Scott Walker and is backed by Republicans.

Conveniently, at this time last year, there was another Supreme Court election that was super-close, when conservative Dan Hagedorn beat progressive Lisa Neubauer by just 6,000 votes statewide. So that makes a model very easy, since we already have a 50-50 race held in April as a template. The key difference here, though, is that in 2020 there was also a Democratic presidential primary contest to drive turnout, instead of last year’s off-off-year election.

Still, we can use 2019 as a good template. Below you’ll find Karofsky’s benchmarks for the most populous counties in Wisconsin:

We’ll also try out a separate set of benchmarks using our usual method: the most recent previous presidential election. Conveniently, this was also a super-close race, much to the nation’s chagrin (though 6% of the state’s votes went to third-party candidates in this election—unlike the 2019 Supreme Court election, where there were only two candidates—so this requires a modification of an additional three points to each side). While Karofsky and Kelly won’t be identified by party labels on the ballot, results in recent Supreme Court elections have fallen largely along traditional partisan lines.

Despite these trends, there are still some noteworthy differences between these two models.

First and foremost is the differing roles of the state’s two biggest and bluest counties, Milwaukee County and Dane County (home of Madison, the state capital, and the University of Wisconsin). In the 2019 Supreme Court race, Dane really led the way, supplying the most votes of any county, despite having a population just 58% the size of Milwaukee County’s, and gave Neubauer a huge vote share—even bigger than in the 2016 presidential election.

Milwaukee County, by contrast, almost slept through last year’s election, producing not only a smaller number of votes but also yielding a more Republican-friendly electorate (suggesting that the low turnout was mostly in the city proper, and higher in the close-in suburbs).

By contrast, in 2016, Milwaukee County led the state in total turnout and also looked considerably bluer, closer to being on the same level as Dane County. Meanwhile, Waukesha County in Milwaukee’s suburbs (the third most-populous county in the state) was indeed crucial for Hagedorn in the 2019 election, providing a slightly bigger percentage of the statewide vote share than it did in 2016. It also gave a much bigger percentage to Hagedorn in 2019 than it did to Donald Trump in 2016, when some of the county’s well-educated electorate was in never-Trump mode, as we saw in a many other affluent suburbs around the country.

It remains to be seen which of the models will be closer to what we see tonight; it’s possible that the Democratic presidential primary’s presence on the ballot will help drive turnout in both Milwaukee and Dane Counties, relative to the rest of the state, despite the challenging circumstances of the election and the greatly diminished number of polling places open in Milwaukee.

To find out, check back at 5 PM ET for our liveblog at Daily Kos Elections.