Wisconsin voters will cast ballots Tuesday in the state’s spring election, where the headline contests include a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and an open-seat mayoral race in Waukesha. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race will determine whether the court’s liberal majority is maintained or expanded, while the mayoral contest will fill the position after Mayor Shawn Reilly said he will not seek a fourth term.
In the Supreme Court race, Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar are competing to replace retiring Justice Rebecca Bradley. Taylor is a former Democratic state representative and is endorsed by the court’s four sitting liberal justices, while Lazar previously served as an assistant state attorney general under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and is endorsed by conservative Justice Annette Ziegler, who announced in March that she will not seek a third term in 2027.
Taylor and Lazar are running to take their places on a bench that liberals have sought to keep steady in recent years. After Justice Janet Protasiewicz won a seat previously held by a conservative in 2023, liberal justices gained a 4-3 majority for the first time in 15 years, and in 2025 Justice Susan Crawford joined the court and preserved that liberal majority.
The spring contest is not drawing the same level of attention as recent Supreme Court races in Wisconsin, in part because the ideological balance of the court is not at stake in the same way it was in earlier elections, though the winner will still join a panel that could become central in future political disputes. The retirement-driven seat shift matters because justices are elected to 10-year terms, with the AP noting that a new panel could sit at the center of potential litigation tied to the 2028 presidential election or congressional redistricting that is expected in the early 2030s.
The AP also described the state’s election geography as a key factor in how statewide outcomes can break. Democrats tend to win by large margins in populous counties like Milwaukee and Dane (home to Madison), while Republicans tend to win by wide margins in smaller, more rural counties across most of the state, and the party’s strength in the “WOW” counties—Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington—has helped counter Democratic advantages in urban areas. The AP highlighted that victory depends on both the size of margins in each party stronghold and how each side performs in swing regions.
In the comparison the AP offered between presidential and recent Supreme Court results, it cited that Kamala Harris won Milwaukee County with 68% of the vote and Dane County with 75% in the 2024 presidential election. By comparison, the successful statewide Supreme Court campaigns of Protasiewicz and Crawford received 73% and 75% of the vote in Milwaukee County and 82% of the vote in Dane County, respectively, and each won statewide with double-digit margins. The AP also noted that both candidates won more than 10 swing counties that voted for Trump in 2024, including Brown County, which Trump carried in all three of his White House campaigns.
Separately, Waukesha will choose its next mayor in what the AP described as its first open-seat mayoral race in 20 years. Common Council President Alicia Halvensleben is running to replace Mayor Shawn Reilly, who is not seeking a fourth term, and state Rep. Scott Allen is also in the race, with Allen described by the AP as one of the more conservative Republicans in the Legislature since his election in 2014. The AP said Halvensleben is the preferred candidate of the Waukesha County Democratic Party.
The AP described Reilly as an independent who left the Republican Party after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and said he has endorsed Halvensleben. For how votes will be handled on election night, the AP said it does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it has determined that there is no scenario in which a trailing candidate could close the gap, and it will continue to report newsworthy developments if a race has not been called.
Recounts are not automatic in Wisconsin, but the AP said a trailing candidate may request one if the winning margin is less than a percentage point. The AP said it may declare a winner in a race eligible for a recount if it can determine that the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.
The AP outlined operational details voters and observers will watch as ballots are tallied. Polls close at 8 p.m. local time (9 p.m. ET). The AP said any registered voter in Wisconsin may participate in the spring election and that the vote will include results and winner declarations for the state Supreme Court and the Waukesha mayoral race.
On turnout and voting activity, the AP said that as of April 1 there were about 3.6 million active registered voters in Wisconsin out of about 4.5 million eligible voting-age adults, and that voters in the state do not register by party. It said nearly 2.4 million votes were cast in the 2025 spring election for state Supreme Court—about 62% of registered voters—and about 29% of voters cast ballots before election day; it added that as of Friday, nearly 281,000 ballots had already been cast.
The AP also described how quickly results have come in past spring elections, saying that in 2025 it first reported Supreme Court race results at 9:09 p.m. ET, about nine minutes after polls closed, and that the last vote update was at 2:12 a.m. ET with about 99% of votes counted. It said the race was called at 10:16 p.m. ET, and noted that in previous Wisconsin elections, counties have differed in when and how they released early and absentee results, with the release pattern varying across jurisdictions during the 2024 general election.
The AP said that as of Tuesday, there will be 210 days until the 2026 midterm elections and directed readers to its election coverage project for additional updates.