Democrats saw major gains in key Wisconsin counties Tuesday after liberal-leaning Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by 10 points over her opponent, former Republican Attorney General and Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel.
Crawford outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris’ margins across Wisconsin, from the state's reddest counties to its Democratic strongholds. Crawford ran roughly 10 points ahead of Harris’ performance in the state, with statewide turnout reaching 70% of the November presidential election.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin Deputy Communications Director Haley McCoy told The Daily Cardinal that the amount of effort put into campaigning can make all the difference.
“Wisconsin Democrats organize year-round to build relationships with voters and encourage folks to stay involved,” McCoy said. “We saw that effort pay off in the form of record turnout for Justice-elect Crawford, and we’re going to continue to put in the work in the weeks and months ahead to keep Wisconsin moving forward.”
Wisconsin saw record voter turnout for a spring election, with roughly 62% of the state’s 3,833,452 active registered voters casting a ballot in the April 1 election — a 22% increase from turnout in the 2023 spring election.
In the 2025 spring election, about 675,000 Wisconsinites voted ahead of Election Day via mail-in ballot or early in person voting, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. In 2023, around 436,000 absentee votes were reported on Election Day for the 2023 Supreme Court election.
Here is a county-by-county look at how both candidates performed in the 2025 Supreme Court race and how this election stacks up to previous elections.
Crawford outperformed Harris in Dane, Milwaukee counties
Crawford held a considerable margin over Schimel and outperformed Harris in Wisconsin’s key Democratic strongholds. Milwaukee and Dane counties shifted 11 points and 12 points left, respectively, from the 2024 presidential election.
In Milwaukee County, Crawford received 74.6% of the vote compared to Harris’ 68.3%, and in Dane County, Crawford received 81.7% of the vote compared to Harris’ 75.1%.
Among wards containing University of Wisconsin-Madison residence halls, Crawford received roughly 92.3% of the vote, outperforming Harris in wards containing university residence halls by nearly 15 percentage points, according to an independent analysis from The Daily Cardinal.
Additionally, Crawford performed marginally better than Justice Janet Protasiewicz on campus. Protasiewicz received 91.3% of the vote from those wards in 2023.
Schimel underperformed Trump in ‘WOW’ counties even as they remained red
The suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee, historically Republican strongholds in statewide elections, have slowly trended toward Democrats in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties — collectively referred to as Wisconsin’s “WOW” counties — are predominantly white and have voted for Republican candidates by margins upwards of 60% in every presidential election in the 21st century, according to state election results archives.
While President Donald Trump won all three counties by a comfortable margin in the 2024 election, Schimel underperformed in all three. Schimel took 57.7%, 51.6% and 66.2% of the vote in Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties, respectively, compared to Trump’s 59.2%, 54.6% and 67.6%.
Despite Schimel’s 15%, 3% and 32% margin over Crawford in Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties, all three Republican strongholds continued to shift left by 4.4, 7.2 and 3.8 points from the 2024 presidential election.
Crawford performed marginally better than Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz in the WOW counties, taking 42.3%, 48.4% and 33.8% of the vote compared to Protasiewicz’s 41.8%, 47.59% and 33.57% in 2023.
‘BOW’ counties flip blue for Crawford, mirroring Protasiewicz 2023 win
Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago counties make up Wisconsin’s “BOW” counties, home to a growing population center in the Fox Valley that includes cities like Green Bay and Appleton. In recent statewide elections, the region has trended less toward Republicans.
While Trump took all three counties in the 2024 presidential election, earning 53.1%, 54.4% and 51.7% in Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago counties respectively, all three went to Crawford in the Supreme Court election.
Crawford won 51.6%, 50.7% and 53.5% of the vote in Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago counties compared to Schimel’s 48.4%, 49.3% and 46.5%.
The “BOW” counties shifted left by 11, 12 and 12 points, respectively, from the 2024 presidential election.
In the spring 2023 election, Protasiewicz won all three “BOW” counties and notably swung Outagamie County in her favor despite Trump and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels performing well in the county in 2020 presidential and 2022 midterm elections.
Wisconsin’s battleground counties go blue, Driftless Area sees left shift
The Driftless Area, a region unglaciated during the last glacial period, encompasses a large portion of southwestern Wisconsin, including Crawford, Vernon, Richland, La Crosse, Monroe, Juneau, Sauk, Iowa, Dane, Green, Grant and Lafayette counties.
Eight of those 12 counties voted in favor of Crawford and four of them — Crawford, Richland, Sauk and Vernon — flipped from red to blue from the 2024 presidential election to the 2025 spring election.
While Trump comfortably won Crawford County in the 2024 presidential election, the county has favored Democratic-aligned candidates in the recent Supreme Court races. In the 2023 spring election, Protasiewicz received 54% of the vote in Crawford County, and in 2025, 51.3% of the vote went to Crawford.
In Richland County, too, despite Trump winning by a 13-point margin in 2024, Crawford saw a four-point victory over Schimel in 2025.
The Driftless Area’s Sauk and Vernon counties, along with Columbia and Door, counties make up Wisconsin’s four battleground counties, often swinging from election to election.
In 2020, the counties went 50-50 — Sauk and Door for Biden and Vernon and Columbia for Trump. Trump then took three of the four, with Door County staying blue for Harris in 2024.
While Trump took Sauk County by 1.6 points over Harris in 2024, Crawford saw a sizable victory in the county, earning 56.9% of the vote — a nearly 14-point margin over her opponent.
In Vernon County, Trump won with a nearly eight-point margin — the largest margin of the four swing states in the 2024 election. That margin was nearly flipped in the 2025 spring election with Crawford receiving 53.7% of the vote compared to Schimel’s 46.3% — a 7.4-point margin.
Columbia County flipped from red to blue with Crawford taking 54.4% of the vote compared to Schimel’s 45.6% — an 8.8-point margin.
Even in Door County, the only swing county that didn’t flip between the two elections, Democrats saw a 10-point increase in performance, according to the Cardinal’s independent data analysis.
In the 2023 spring election, Protasiewicz won all four swing counties.
Anna Kleiber is the state news editor for The Daily Cardinal. She previously served as the arts editor. Anna has written in-depth on elections, legislative maps and campus news. She will spend the summer as the 2025 Sharon Stark political reporting intern with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Anna has previously interned with WisPolitics and Madison Magazine. Follow her on X at @annakleiber03.
