Does the Democrats’ comfortable win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race signal a shift away from Trump?

Judge Susan Crawford, a liberal, won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by just over 10% on Tuesday. This comes despite Elon Musk’s investment of $20 million into the race on behalf of the conservative, Brad Schimel.

In another race, Republican Randy Fine won the special election to replace Mike Walz in the House of Representatives. But he only won the race by 14%, in a district that voted for President Donald Trump by 37% last November.

It should be noted that the Democrat in the race, Josh Weil, outspent Fine by over $10 million to Fine’s under $1 million spent. While Democrats claim to be the party of the working class, their candidates are typically bankrolled by billionaires and rich interest groups.

But even with this context, there can be no doubt that the Democrats over performed and the Republicans underperformed. The question is, does this signal a shift away from Trump?

It’s difficult to answer the question with a “yes.” For one thing, this is a tiny sample size of two races. It’s also the case that the party out of the White House is almost always more energized than the party in the White House.

We’ve seen this countless times, with Republicans winning the Virginia governor race in 2021, the first year of the Biden Presidency, Democrats gaining 40 seats in the House in the 2018 midterms under Trump, and massive Republican waves in both of Obama’s midterms in 2010 and 2014.

It should also be noted that for a while, it was the Democratic base that was less likely to turn out in off year elections, and the Republicans with a more dedicated base, it seems that now, the reverse has happened.

Democrats are more dedicated to vote in any election, while Republicans drop off compared to their turnout in Presidential elections. If this is the case, it still poses a problem for the GOP in building their Congressional majorities, but it should be factored in when we prognosticate how Presidential elections will be affected.

It should be noted that when a base of one side or the other drops off, it isn’t a situation where masses of people who voted in the Presidential election just don’t vote in the off year election.

It could be a 3-4 point drop off, or in more serious cases, a 5-10 point drop off. That is still noticeable, but most people in the base who vote in Presidential elections also vote in off year elections. But unless these races are conducted in safe states, this drop off affects the outcome.

Added to this is that Republicans has a quite poor midterm in 2022, when Joe Biden was in the White House, a midterm that they were supposed to dominate. Instead of taking back the Senate by multiple seats, the GOP actually lost a Senate seat, and went from 50 to 49 seats. And instead of massive gains in the House, the GOP gained less than 15 seats to only take back the lower chamber’s majority by the skin of their teeth.

Yet even with a poor midterm as the out party, the base turned out in the 2024 Presidential election. It could be argued that 2024 was a poor environment for the incumbent Democrats, and that consequently, poor showings now and in 2026 could have more correlation for how the American people might vote in 2028, as the Democrats will not be unpopular incumbents then.

It can also be argued that the “low propensity” element of the Republican base are people who are not really Republicans, and only come out when Donald Trump is on the ballot.

This would mean that in any election where Trump is not on the ballot; 2026 and we assume 2028, unless the 22nd Amendment is repealed, the “low propensity” Republican voters of 2016, 2020 and 2024, largely won’t show up for the 2028 GOP nominee.

A rebuttal to that point, if it is true, is that Mr Trump can sell that the 2028 GOP nominee is his successor, and encourage those voters to come out. It will probably work, but even then, there likely will be a drop by at least a couple percent of voters who would have come out for Trump himself. And in a country as closely divided as ours, that could be the difference.

But these are all just theories and speculation. It’s difficult to ascertain what the mood of the country is based on an environment where everyone who is inclined to, does vote. And of course, the mood of the country now, or in 2026 is not guaranteed to be the mood of the country in 2028.

Everyone likes taking election results and pronouncing a supposed shift in the mood of the electorate. While sometimes these elections do show that, off year elections are usually just an example of one more dissatisfied side coming out more, and the more satisfied side seeing a 2-10% drop off. That swings results from one side to the other.

Is the country really shifting away from a President if a portion of his or her supporters just don’t show up to vote? This happened to Barack Obama in both of his midterms, but it didn’t really illustrate a country that supported a Republican more than him.

We should use the results of Tuesday’s elections as one of many data points we will collect in the coming years. The definitely matter, but they alone do not signal a shift away from Donald Trump by Americans.