Only a few days left until the election and I just got this update from Ben Wikler, Chair of Democratic Party, Wisconsin and thought it was worth sharing.
Dear friends and allies,
One week and a couple of hours from now, the polls will close in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race between Judge Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel—and we’ll find out the result of this spring’s most critical bellwether election, a race that, increasingly, is a referendum on Trump and Musk.
This could be a nailbiter, or a landslide. It’s impossible to say.
It could be incredibly close. Polling is tight. Both sides have consolidated their partisans and are sprinting to drive up turnout. Team Crawford has broken our side’s fundraising records—but so has the other side, aided by more than $20 million from Elon Musk. We’re being outspent, but not necessarily outcommunicated or out organized. We’re sprinting through the tape.
There’s another possibility: it might not be close. Until the polls close and ballots are counted, it’s extremely difficult to predict the level of turnout on each side. We certainly learned that in 2023, when polling suggested a close race, but won in a landslide on the back of a Democratic surge unmatched by energy on the GOP side. And last night, Democrats won a Pennsylvania special election and flipped a district that Trump won by 15 points last fall.
And yet, on the other hand, internal polling in 2019 a week out was more favorable than it is today—and then a late GOP surge swung the race to the GOP by 0.4%.
Thus our strategy: take nothing for granted, and drive out more votes until the polls close.
This email goes through the major aspects of the race that we can track, and what we don’t know. But we do know this: the campaign, the party, and our volunteers and supporters and allies and partners have poured more into this race than any previous fight.
As Susan Crawford has said, “When I was a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be fighting the world’s richest man.” Every person and group that has helped Judge Crawford has turned this into a fight where we believe we can prevail.
Whatever happens, we’re deeply grateful for the partnership, investment, and intensive work of everyone who has made Susan Crawford’s cause their own.
Elon Musk’s group, Building America’s Future, last week released polling that showed Crawford ahead by mid-single digits—in a scenario where Democratic turnout exceeds GOP turnout, as it has in the last two spring elections. But in an even turnout scenario, unsurprisingly, they have the race at a statistical tie, with Crawford up by a hair.
Democrats are now overwhelmingly supporting Crawford, Republicans are overwhelmingly supporting Schimel, reported voter enthusiasm is roughly equal, voters are paying attention, and the pool of undecided voters is very small. All of that points to a very high turnout election. Both sides have effectively nationalized the race. Although the race is officially nonpartisan, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert called it a “Trump era judicial election on partisan steroids.” Musk’s advice to Schimel was memorably summed up by Axios as “Get Trumpier.” We believe that’s the Musk campaigns’ core strategy in the home stretch. They aim to turn out Trump fans; We aim to turn out everyone else.
Early voting
One trend in the data is clear: a ton of people are voting early. To date, 406,773 voters have cast a ballot—which is a number 50% higher than the corresponding day in the spring of 2023. Of these, 206,830 are mail-in votes (a slight growth relative to 2023), while 199,918 are Early Votes In Person, which are way up this year.
The first key question is, how many of the early voters are Republicans? At present, we believe we’re doing better with early voters than in November 2024’s presidential race (which we lost by 0.9%), but not as well as we did in 2023’s Supreme Court race (which Janet Protasiewicz won by 11%).
This tracks the polling—suggesting a tighter race than 2023, but a single-digit advantage for the pro-democracy side. As Elon Musk said on his live X stream with Brad Schimel on Saturday, “If you look at the early voting data so far, Democrats are winning, which is not good.” (It is good.)
The second question is whether the jump in early voting predicts higher turnout overall—or if it’s merely a shift in time, from voting on Election Day to voting early. We can see that 83% of early voters have voted in at least two spring elections over the last eight years. These ballots are overwhelmingly people we had already expected would vote.
But a late jump in new voters in the spring remains possible. As we’ve experienced before, a surge in GOP voting in the final stretch and on Election Day can change the math quickly, and the Early Vote in Person numbers don’t have the favorable gender gap that we saw even in 2024. So we’re going to keep two feet on the gas.
Organizing
In 2023, we broke our records for organizing in a spring election. This year, we’ve broken them again—by a lot. Compared to this point in 2023, we’ve more than doubled our voter outreach—with more than 3.2 million voter contact attempts, including 385,000 door-knocks and 2.8 million phone calls. Each weekend, we’re completing thousands of volunteer shifts. And we know our allies are also knocking up a storm; partners report an additional 281,000 knocks this spring. That adds up to two thirds of a million knocks for Crawford, with a week remaining.
However, we’re facing a far bigger investment in turnout from Elon Musk’s America PAC than we’ve ever seen in a spring election. That organization has now invested $11.5 million to talk to voters all over the state via field operations, texts, mail, and digital ads. What we don’t yet know is how much that investment generates additional votes for Schimel. They’ve claimed a million door knocks, but many anecdotal reports (including one reported on today) suggest that many these operations may not be helping Schimel much—as in the case of the Musk canvasser who inquired about “a deceased voter, asking, ‘Is she voting for the nice lady or the devil?’”
Our numbers will keep shooting up in the final stretch, with thousands of volunteers already committed to knocking and calling over the next seven days. And we and our allies take care to organize people who actually support our candidate.
Spending
Wisconsin political newsletter WisPolitics estimates total spending in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race as above $90 million and rising fast, with $50 million in spending and ad reservations for Schimel against $42 million for Crawford. We believe both numbers are likely understatements and that total spending has already well eclipsed $100 million—doubling the $51 million record set in the 2023 state Supreme Court race.
Crawford’s campaign has outraised Schimel’s by more than 2 to 1, with support from more than 125,000 individual donors. Among Crawford supporters, no donor has come close to funding 5% of the overall effort. On the GOP side, Elon Musk’s $19.3 million represents nearly 40% of Schimel’s total support. With Schimel’s home-stretch pivot into an all-Trump-all-the-time message strategy in the final stretch, just after the “get Trumpier” memo from Musk, it appears that Musk is directing Schimel’s campaign at the same time as he directs the White House.
While the Schimel side is outspending the pro-Crawford alliance, its spending is far less efficient per dollar—which is why Team Crawford has been able to match or exceed the volume of ads and voter communication throughout the campaign. Candidate campaigns get the lowest rate on TV ads, for example, and the Crawford campaign’s superior fundraising has allowed her to capitalize on those low prices. On the GOP side, most of the TV ads have been bought at higher prices by Super PACs and other outside groups.
Messaging
For most of the campaign, Schimel’s message was all crime, all the time. As Crawford’s argument on abortion took hold, he also began running defense on abortion. In the final stretch, however, he and his allies have switched over to a flood of campaigning and communication about his support for, and from, Trump. A statewide ad touting Trump’s endorsement, for example, and campaigning with a twenty-foot inflatable Trump balloon to make Schimel’s allegiance clear:
The Crawford campaign, meanwhile, has fought Schimel to a standstill on crime and public safety, while communicating intensively on Schimel’s support for Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban—and Crawford’s work representing Planned Parenthood in court.
Abortion has remained an extraordinarily powerful message, uniting Democrats, persuading independents, and dividing Republicans.
As Musk’s investments grew, Judge Crawford, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and allied groups also communicated with Democrats—who loathe Musk—about how Musk has bought and paid for Schimel, tying his contributions to the larger theme of “Kneepad Brad” Schimel’s pattern of corruption.
Musk’s involvement in the race—his first political project since the 2024 election—has also generated a flood of national earned media interest in the race, which has driven up grassroots fundraising for Crawford.
Vibes—and national implications
Spring Supreme Court races are unpredictable. Schimel has maintained that, after 3.4 million voters turned out last November, turnout this spring could be as high as 2 million people—which would break all records. As we learned last year, it can be hard to measure the level of turnout on the Republican side. But one thing, across Wisconsin, is clear: Democratic voters are furious. They are terrified by Musk’s and Trump’s attacks on their communities and on the country, and they are looking for ways to fight back. If we can channel that energy into support for Susan Crawford and against Brad Schimel, we may be able to overmatch the pro-Trump turnout wave that Schimel, Musk, and the GOP are attempting to build.
If—when—Judge Crawford wins this race, she will show the country that the massive fortune of the world’s richest man can be defeated by the combined efforts of people who believe in freedom, democracy, decency, and the rule of law. She, and all of her supporters, will show that voters can have the final say. And everyone who has helped to power this campaign will know that they played a part in lighting a beacon of hope in a moment of political darkness.
Now’s the time to spread the word to our neighbors, friends and family and do all we can to help win this one in these last few days. Thank you Wisconsin!
Hi Jessica, thanks a million for your help promoting Judge Susan Crawford. I know Wisconsin will outfight the billionaires! We are not for sale!
How did Elon Musk know on Saturday that Dems were winning in early voting?