A major early voting push and a statewide network of around 2,000 volunteers were key to former President Donald Trump’s election night victory in Wisconsin, according to Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming.
He said the party’s focus now is retaking the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority in April and the 2026 races for governor and attorney general.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday morning, Schimming said Wisconsin Democrats “have a lot of introspection to do” after an election night where Trump’s win in the Dairy State pushed him over the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to clinch the presidency. It’s only the second time since 1984 that a Republican presidential candidate won Wisconsin. The first was Trump’s surprise win in 2016.
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“I have news for the other side,” Schimming said. “Celebrity visits don’t win elections. Out-of-state money doesn’t always win elections. They’ve been spending months on the other side bragging about their wonderful state organization and getting all this outside money poured in here — they lost last night.”
A spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday’s results.
Aside from Trump’s victory, Republicans also fended off Democratic challenges in six U.S. House races, and state Republicans retained their majority in the Wisconsin Assembly despite new voting maps enacted earlier this year.
Schimming said one of the major keys to Republicans’ success in Wisconsin was the party’s new embrace of early, absentee voting. He said it “took a little doing” to convince some GOP groups in the state to get on board with early voting, but it paid off.
“Republicans can’t keep going into Election Day 100,000 or 200,000 votes down and expect to make it up in 13 hours,” Schimming said. “I think, frankly, the party needed to cross that bridge and deal with the reality of early vote and the importance of early vote in Wisconsin, and we did that.”
One race that ended up going Democrats’ way was the reelection of U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. The Associated Press called that race just before 1 p.m. Wednesday with her defeating Republican banking executive Eric Hovde by nearly 29,000 votes.
While the state GOP will spend time looking over Tuesday’s results and potential shifts in various counties, Schimming said the focus is now on April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election and 2026 races for governor, attorney general and state legislative seats.
Schimming said “there’s enormous interest” in making sure liberals don’t keep their majority on the court, which has resulted in Republican-drawn legislative voting maps and a ban on absentee ballot drop boxes being overturned this year.
Former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel has been campaigning for state Supreme Court since November 2023. In April of this year, liberal Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley announced she will not seek reelection.
“We are in an excellent position right now as a state Republican Party to assist a candidate for Supreme Court and help them win,” Schimming said. “We have updated lists and data, and our local organizations, as you can imagine, are pretty excited today about President Trump’s win last night, so I know that I’ll be having some of those discussions as well.”
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