2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election
The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election was held on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, to elect a justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a ten-year term. Milwaukee County circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, effectively flipping the ideological balance of the court from a conservative to liberal majority.
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Protasiewicz: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Kelly: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Tie: 50% | |||||||||||||
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| Elections in Wisconsin |
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Incumbent justice Patience D. Roggensack chose to retire after 20 years on the court; she had identified as a conservative and voted consistently with the conservative 4–3 majority on the court. Protasiewicz and Kelly advanced from the February 21 nonpartisan primary, receiving 46% and 24% of the votes, respectively. Although Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are officially nonpartisan, Kelly was identified as being the Republican-aligned candidate and Protasiewicz the Democratic-aligned candidate. Other candidates in the 2023 primary included conservative Waukesha County circuit judge Jennifer Dorow and liberal Dane County circuit judge Everett Mitchell.
The race was widely considered to be a de facto referendum on legal abortion access in Wisconsin, as well as how the court rules on future cases involving abortion rights, voting rights, and redistricting. Because the court rejected Donald Trump's false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, the outcome of this race could determine how the court rules if a similar attempt is made to overturn the 2024 election. The election was described as the most important 2023 U.S. election; three weeks before the election it had already become the most expensive judicial race in history. Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler called it "the most important election nobody's ever heard of."
Protasiewicz won the election by 11.02 percentage points, which flipped the court to a liberal majority. Kelly lost by a slightly wider margin than his own defeat three years prior. Protasiewicz took office on August 1, 2023.