Traditionally Democratic communities are showing a higher vote share while conservative counties are trending slightly lower than in last year’s race.
Early voting for Wisconsin’s April 7 Supreme Court election is significantly lower than at the same point last year, according to data compiled by election analysts.
As of Tuesday, 189,000 people had voted early, either by mail or in-person absentee ballot. That compares with 345,000 ballots cast at the equivalent time ahead of the 2025 Supreme Court race, which was the most expensive Supreme Court election in Wisconsin history. Dane and Milwaukee counties, the state’s two largest and Democratic strongholds, accounted for 31.2% of early ballots cast so far. That is nearly identical to the 31.5% share at the same point in 2025. The three conservative-leaning suburban Milwaukee counties known as the WOW counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — made up 18.3% of early ballots, down from 19.8% at the equivalent time last year.
The figures indicate that while overall early voting is down sharply, the geographic breakdown of ballots shows Democratic-leaning areas holding a steady share of the early vote while Republican-leaning counties are contributing a smaller proportion. A day earlier, 147,000 ballots had been cast compared with 259,000 at the same stage in 2025. At that point, Dane and Milwaukee counties accounted for 32.3% of early votes, up slightly from 31.7% the prior year, while the WOW counties were at 18.3%, down from 20.3%.
Last year’s Supreme Court election drew record turnout for a spring contest in a nonpresidential year, exceeding 50% of the voting-age population. Early voting that year far outpaced previous cycles and helped produce a double-digit victory for the liberal candidate, Judge Susan Crawford.
This year’s race has drawn less national attention as the election does not determine control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Despite this, according to the recent Marquette Law Poll, voters still believe this election will determine control of the court. A liberal victory would solidify the court’s balance of power until at least 2030. The clear gap in turnout among traditional party bases was also evident in the poll, which showed that Democratic voters are more likely to vote than Republicans in the April 7th election by a significant margin.
