Policy / April 10, 2026
The results of an important election in Wisconsin this week suggest that Republicans could be in deep trouble.
Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice-elect Chris Taylor takes a photo with voters after speaking Tuesday, April 7, 2026, in Madison, Wisconsin.
(Owen Ziliak / Wisconsin State Journal via AP) The Republican Party was founded in 1854 in a small white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, a community that remained Republican for the vast majority of the 172 years that followed. Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in Ripon in 2024, even after Harris campaigned there– by a comfortable margin of 55 to 45.
But, like a growing number of historically Republican red areas that have begun to turn purple, or even blue, since the start of Trump’s disastrous second term, Ripon took a sharp turn last Tuesday — part of a now indisputable national shift toward progressive and Democratic candidates. The city voted by about 58 percent to send Chris Taylor, a highly progressive former Democratic lawmaker and jurist, to the state Supreme Court. The rest of Wisconsin had a similar idea. Taylor was elected Tuesday in a landslide victory, flipping a previously conservative seat and giving progressives a 5-2 majority on a powerful state court that less than a decade ago was a bastion of right-wing judicial activism. This of course matters to the people of Wisconsin, but it also means something to the entire country.
Wisconsin is the ultimate presidential battleground state, having supported Donald Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and Trump once again in 2024, all by margins less than 1%. Again Taylora former lawyer and policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin who currently serves as a state appeals court judge, won the seat in a margin of 20 points against fellow Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, a prominent and well-connected conservative who, as deputy state attorney general, defended former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. assaults on organized labor, public employees, and fair elections.
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Taylor ran a significantly smarter and better financed campaign than Lazar. But that margin of victory was unprecedented in recent major elections in Wisconsin. In an election in which Democrats voted enthusiastically while many Republicans seemingly stayed home, Taylor carried urban, suburban and rural areas across the state.
The scale of Taylor’s victory attracted national attention, according to observers at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. noted that she “became the first Democratic-aligned candidate since 2015 to win a majority of the state’s counties, 42 of 72.” Twenty-nine Wisconsin counties that supported Trump in the fall of 2024 supported Taylor in the spring of 2026. Historically, suburban Republican strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison have favored progressives in the officially nonpartisan contest, just as Republicans have done. rural counties in western Wisconsin and the north, where many areas saw shifts of 20 points or more from right to left.
So what does this tell us about this fall’s midterm elections, when control of the Republican-led House and U.S. Senate, as well as states in places like Wisconsin, will be at stake?
A spring election for a technically nonpartisan seat on the Supreme Court is different from a partisan race for a seat in the House of Representatives or governor. But just as big Democratic victories in the 2025 off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia were telling, and just as the overwhelming trend of Democratic victories in special elections for state legislative seats nationwide revealed republican vulnerabilitiesWisconsin’s results are therefore relevant to the 2026 midterm elections, especially when it comes to U.S. House races.
Currently, the Republicans have a razor thin Majority of 217 to 214 in the House (three seats are vacant). Democrats need to flip only a handful of districts nationwide to take control of the House. Although much attention has been paid to whether Democrats could win additional seats in states like California, New York and Virginia, their majorities could also come in Wisconsin and a handful of other Midwestern states, like Iowa.
Because of sweeping state congressional redistricting initiated by Walker and instituted by cautious Republican legislators and courts, six of the eight seats in the Wisconsin House of Representatives are currently held by the Republican Party.
THE VoteHub The election mapping website determined that Taylor won the most votes in seven of eight districts, including those of Republican Reps. Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Tony Weid, Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany (the party’s unsuccessful candidate for governor).
In western Wisconsin’s Van Orden Third District, Taylor won by double digits, leading astronomical percentages votes in more urban counties such as La Crosse (69 percent) and Eau Claire (68 percent), but also gaining about 60 percent in the largely rural Grant, Crawford and Vernon counties. As longtime Vermont critic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a longtime critic of Van Orden, pointed out, the third-place finisher “certainly showed a nice shade of blue in Tuesday’s election.”
This is bad news for the Republican incumbent, who already seemed vulnerable in what is likely to be another race this fall with Democrat Rebecca Cooke.
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Democrats also noted that Steil’s First District in southeastern Wisconsin gave Taylor overwhelming support. Racine and Kenosha counties, which both supported Trump in 2024, came out in favor of the progressive on April 7.
And what about Republican Glenn Grothman’s Sixth District, where Ripon is located? Aaron Wojciechowskia former local elected official from the college town of Oshkosh who is seeking the Democratic nomination to take on Grothman, hailed Taylor’s victory as a signal that “Wisconsin voters are excited, rejecting extremism and demanding a court that protects our rights, our votes and our democracy.”
Wojciechowski points to “double-digit blue fluctuations across the board on Grothman’s field.” said”This is a significant district-wide shift to blue in every county that makes up the 6th. It’s proof that the entire 6th District – from Sheboygan to Ozaukee to Fond du Lac to Manitowoc to Green Lake and beyond – is moving our way. Voters are done with chaos, divisive rhetoric and a Congress that does nothing. The same energy that toppled the Supreme Court can flip this congressional seat by November. The momentum is there, and the data proves we can win.
This is an ambitious claim. Grothman’s district has not elected a Democrat since 1964, when a union machinist from Fond du Lac nominated John Abner Race upset longtime incumbent Republican William Van Pelt, an absurdly conservative Republican, in a result that surprised Race himself. Of course, 1964 was the final year of the “blue wave”– as the party led by President Lyndon Johnson won 61% of the national vote, carried 44 states and brought Democrats to power, even in historically Republican districts.
Could 2026 really see a blue wave big enough to unseat not only vulnerable Republican incumbents like Van Orden, but also entrenched Republicans like Grothman? It’s a big challenge. But then again, Chris Taylor has just carried the cradle of the Republican Party. So maybe everything East to win.
John Nichols John Nichols is the editor-in-chief of The nation. He was previously the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, co-authored or edited more than a dozen books on topics ranging from the history of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyzes of American and global media systems. His latest, co-written with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It’s okay to be angry at capitalism.
