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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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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.
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.[2][3][4] Other candidates in the 2023 primary included conservative Waukesha County circuit judge Jennifer Dorow and liberal Dane County circuit judge Everett Mitchell.[5]
The race was widely considered to be a de facto referendum on legal abortion access in Wisconsin,[6] as well as how the court rules on future cases involving abortion rights, voting rights, and redistricting.[7] 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.[8] 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.[a] Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler called it "the most important election nobody's ever heard of."[14]
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.
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