Taylor secured a 10-year term with a 20-percentage-point victory over Maria Lazar, the conservative-backed candidate.
Wisconsin voted Tuesday on who would succeed a conservative member of the state's supreme court. Technically such elections are non-partisan. But in practice, candidates receive backing from political parties. This election saw Democratic-backed Chris Taylor decisively defeat Republican-backed Maria S. Lazar.
Last year in a previous Wisconsin Supreme Court race, the Democratic-backed candidate won by 10 points. This year Chris Taylor doubled that margin. And while the 2025 contest was over a liberal held seat, this year's was over a conservative one. So Judge Taylor effectively flipped a seat to give the court a 5 to 2 liberal supermajority.
Wisconsin voters on Tuesday picked Chris Taylor to be the next state Supreme Court justice in what was the most emphatic of recent victories for Democratic-backed candidates, who will control the high court for the next several years. Taylor won 60% of the votes, according to preliminary election results, in what has been known as a purple swing state where recent presidential elections have often been decided within 1 percentage point. Taylor’s win over Maria Lazar, the Republican-backed candidate, will expand the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to 5-2. At her election party, Taylor said the people of Wisconsin stood up for rights, freedoms, democracy and elections. [ ... ]
Taylor dominated in the state’s Democratic strongholds, Madison and Milwaukee counties, winning 83.8% and 75.8% of the votes, respectively, according to preliminary data compiled by the Associated Press. But Taylor also flipped suburban Ozaukee County, which had been reliably Republican. In that county, Taylor won 52.1% of the vote. Susan Crawford, the successful liberal candidate in the 2025 Supreme Court election, lost the county with 48.4% of the vote. In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris lost Ozaukee County with 43.9%. In all, Taylor won a majority of the vote in 42 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, according to the AP data. In 2025, Crawford won 23 counties, and Harris in 2024 won 13.
In short, this was a romp. As mentioned above, Taylor even carried Ozaukee County – one of the three suburban longtime conservative "WOW counties" to the west and north of Milwaukee.
This result has implications for Wisconsin legislative elections later this year. Taylor won in 7 state senate districts which Republicans need to hold on to to retain control of the Wisconsin Senate. State Senate Democratic Committee: Breaking news: Judge Chris Taylor swept Republicans must win Senate districts There is even more good news from Wisconsin.
A Trump-backed data center was given a big thumbs down by the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington in a referendum. Port Washington is in the previously mentioned Ozaukee County which has begun to trend away from Republicans recently.
Wisconsin city passes nation’s first anti-data center referendum
A small Wisconsin city home to a data center project backed by President Donald Trump voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to restrict future data centers, in a first-of-its-kind referendum that backers said could offer a blueprint for AI infrastructure opponents around the country. Voters in the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington approved the measure by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, according to unofficial results.
Broligarch-run OpenAI and Oracle will try to reverse the referendum in court citing a state law. But the Port Washington vote sets a precedent and is likely to encourage NO votes in other jurisdictions holding referendums on gigantic data centers.
