Last night, Dane County circuit judge Jill Karofsky pulled off a seismic upset in the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She defeated conservative incumbent justice Dan Kelly, singlehandedly reducing the conservative majority on the Badger State’s highest court to a paper-thin margin of one seat.
But an even bigger story was that Karofsky’s victory wasn’t even close. This was how the county-by-county map looked when I went to bed last night, courtesy Business Insider:
My, that’s pretty! This is yet another reminder that acres don’t vote. Kelly may have carried more counties, but it looks like Karofsky swept almost all of the big counties. Just by eyeballing it, Kelly only carried one county with a decent-sized city in it, Marathon (Wausau).
And it’s all the more remarkable since turnout in Milwaukee was waaaay down. With dozens of poll workers staying home due to coronavirus concerns, there were only five polling sites for a city of over 590,000 people, resulting in absurdly long lines.
It looks like Karofsky more than made up for it by going gangbusters in the southwestern part of the state. While it’s no surprise that ridiculously blue Madison turned out for its native daughter, the entire lower-left corner of the state from Madison to Eau Claire and the Minnesota border is coated blue. A good chunk of this area is in WI-03, where it looks like Trump’s narrow 49-44 win was enough to carry Wisconsin in 2016.
But even better news came in this morning. As of just before 10 am Eastern, Karofsky’s lead has grown to almost 11 points, 55.2-44.7. The closest parallel I can draw is to the congressional seats in California that flipped as absentee ballots came in, turning what was an already clear nationwide Democratic victory into a 41-seat landslide. In other words—Karofsky is winning in a slow-motion rout.
Looks like Robin Vos and Co.’s ham-handed attempt to tamp down turnout has blown up spectacularly. All they may have done was awaken a sleeping bear. And that doesn’t portend well for Trump in November. If Wisconsinites are willing to walk on broken glass for a Supreme Court race, imagine what would happen in a higher-turnout presidential year. After all, if Wisconsin reverts to form, we’ve almost certainly flipped Michigan and Pennsylvania as well—and if that happens, say hello to President Joe Biden.
Once again, we have proof that when Democrats turn out, they win—and big.
