US President Donald Trump suffered a significant setback in Wisconsin on Tuesday as voters elected a liberal judge to the state’s Supreme Court, despite substantial financial backing from his influential adviser, Elon Musk, who invested millions in the race to influence the outcome. In other elections, while Democrats faced defeats, their overall support saw an increase.
Two months after his inauguration as US President, Trump celebrated victory in two House races in Florida, which remained in Republican hands but with a significantly smaller margin than expected.
However, he failed to reverse the outcome in an election for a Supreme Court judge in the state of Wisconsin, which would have tipped the balance in favour of the Republicans had he succeeded.
Liberal judge Susan Crawford emerged victorious with a comfortable 10-point lead over Trump-backed Brad Schimel, according to exit polls.
Trump ignored the results on social media, instead celebrating a separate Wisconsin ballot initiative requiring voters to present photo identification in order to cast a ballot.
"Voter I.D. just approved in Wisconsin election... this is a big win for Republicans, maybe the biggest win of the night," he posted on Truth Social late on Tuesday.
'Fate of civilization'
Elon Musk, who has spearheaded Trump's attempts to gut much of the US government in a right-wing cost-cutting drive, went to Wisconsin to drum up support for Schimel.
"It's like one of those strange situations where a seemingly small election would determine the fate of Western civilization here," Musk said in a discussion on his social media platform X on Tuesday.
After the Crawford victory, Democrat left-wing politician Bernie Sanders congratulated Democrat voters saying that "as a result of your strong grassroots organizing, you have defeated the wealthiest person on earth. You have set an example for the rest of the country. We can do it."
The New York Times, which called the election "effectively a referendum on Elon Musk," said that "The outcomes made clear that a once-demoralized Democratic base is animated again."
The reason why Musk threw his financial weight behind these elections is because the supreme court, which now tilts to the left with a 4-3 majority for the Democrats, rules, among other things, on voting district boundaries.
Redistricting, process that takes placee every ten years after the national census, and is the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts, typically occurring every ten years following the US census. This process aims to ensure that each district has roughly the same population, thereby maintaining equal representation in legislative bodies such as the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures.
But after the 2011 census, Wisconsin districts were "gerrymandered" in an extreme way, and largely benefitted the Republicans.
According to Wisconsin Watch, a local investigative news outlet, "Democratic gains in an election environment favoring Republicans provided further evidence that Wisconsin’s Republican governor and Legislature in 2011 designed maps to allow their party to keep legislative control no matter how much statewide sentiment might change.
The party re-upped those maps after the 2020 census with help from the then-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court."
But in 2024, the balance within the Supreme Court had shifted in favour of the Democrats, and they reversed the 2011 district mapping decision, a 2024 Supreme court decision reversed this, and even though Trump won the state as a whole, the Democrats managed to flip 14 districts.
"The 2011 partisan gerrymander is dead," according to Wisconsin Watch.
Trump's -and Musk's- hope was that with a Republican win, the Wisconsin Supreme Court would tilt back to favour the GOP, after which it could again help re-drawing the district boundaries.
In a swing state like Wisconsin every vote counts, and could eventually decide the overal outcome of the composition of Congress during the 2025 midterms, and in the end, the result of the 2028 Presidential elections.
Trump victory in surprise landslide vote leaves Philadelphia stunned
(With newsagencies)
