Democrats win, Elon loses in Wisconsin's Supreme Court election

The left is emboldened as the midterm campaign kicks off, and Musk is left with egg on his face and a hole in his pocket

This short article is the first in a long-running offering I’m going to be doing to provide more value to paying subscribers of Strength In Numbers, once this becomes my full-time job. The intent is to analyze the news of the day faster and more empirically than anyone else, while leaving some room to revise opinions later as more data come in. Future articles will be posted online and not sent via email, in an effort to avoid cluttering your inbox.

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I’m writing this piece about 50 minutes after the Associated Press called the Wisconsin Supreme Court election for Susan Crawford (liberal, Dem-aligned) over Brad Schimel (conservative/rep). At 11:18 PM ET, Crawford leads Schimel 54.8% to 45.2%, rounding up to a 10-point margin. Just under 90% of the vote is reporting.

So, quickly, who are the winners and losers tonight?

Winners: Democrats (and Crawford, obviously)

If Crawford’s 9-10 point margin holds, Democrats will have scored a 11-point swing from Kamala Harris’s 2024 margin in the race (she lost by 1 percentage point). This is, coincidentally, about the same swing Democrats are seeing in the average special election this cycle. That statistic takes into account two closer-than-expected races in Florida, where Democrats did 22 and 16 points better than in 2024.

This should give them solid fundraising and ground-game momentum going into the 2026 midterms. As a comparison, in 2018, Democratic candidates in special elections were doing better than 2016 by about 10 points.

Crawford appears to have done particularly well relative to Harris in Dane and Milwaukee counties, which could indicate the party is clawing back some support from the groups they lost among in 2024 — namely, young, very lefty, and non-white voters. We’ll need to wait for full precinct-level results to be sure, but that would certainly bode well for them heading into the midterms.

And because turnout in Wisconsin was so high — about 75% of presidential-year levels — naysayers can’t chalk up the entire Democratic overperformance to turnout. At least some Wisconsinites have to have changed their minds from Trump to Crawford. That will make a difference when it comes time to strategize for next year.

Losers: Republicans and Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the big loser tonight. He spoke at rallies and to cable news shows to try to make the race about the “future of civilization.” In doing so, however, he made the race in large part about himself. That was a losing proposition from the start, since the public disapproves of most of what he is doing to the federal government as the head of the “Department of Government Efficiency”:

Republicans are starting to feel the squeeze from Musk’s unpopularity, too. The Daily Beast reported today that some Republicans in close districts were even hoping for a defeat in Wisconsin so that they could make the case to toss him aside. The public opinion data — and now the electoral data, too — are certainly not on his side.

Winner: This community

Finally, if I can be bold, this Substack is a winner. I had a successful crossover live video stream of the contest with The Downballot (you can re-watch here!) where we discussed the benchmarks I put out to subscribers this morning. Those were also very helpful, pointing to Crawford beating her benchmark for a tied election by about 8 points as early as 9:45 tonight (45 minutes after polls closed). And we forecast precinct/ward results, too — in a way similar to the method used by network decision desks, but in real time, for a live audience. That was fun, and the data/code for the model is now open source.