State Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, is leading conservative State Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar by eight percentage points among likely voters, according to a new Marquette University Law School poll.
But more than 40% of likely voters are still undecided with just two weeks to go until the April 7 election. Early voting began March 24.
“We don’t usually have this many undecided voters this close to an election,” poll director Charles Franklin said.
The poll, which was released on March 24, found Taylor had 30% of the vote compared to Lazar with 22% among likely voters. Among registered voters, Taylor had 23% compared to Lazar with 17%, meaning Taylor was leading by six percentage points.
Another 46% of likely voters said they were undecided. That’s down from last month, when nearly two-thirds of likely voters said they were still undecided.
“This race is wide open!” Lazar wrote on Facebook Tuesday shortly after the poll results were released. The post included a graphic showing the large number of undecided voters.
She accused Taylor of having an “activist agenda” and said she would legislate from the bench.
The Taylor campaign did not have an immediate reaction to the poll.
The margin of error was 4.4 percentage points among registered voters with 850 Wisconsinites surveyed between March 11 and 18. Among likely voters, the margin of error was about 5 percentage points.
The latest poll shows Taylor has widened her lead over Lazar since last month, when Taylor led Lazar by 7 percentage points, 22% to 15%, among likely voters. Taylor led Lazar by 5 percentage points among registered voters in the previous poll, which was released on Feb. 25, while 66% of registered voters said they were undecided.
State Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, but in recent years have become increasingly polarized.
The March 24 poll found that while Republicans heavily prefer Lazar and Democrats heavily prefer Taylor, independents lean toward Taylor, though a number of independent voters said they don’t plan to vote in the Supreme Court election.
Liberal candidates have won four of the last five Supreme Court elections. In 2023, the court flipped to a liberal majority for the first time in well over a decade with the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz.
Liberals maintained control after the April 2025 race, which went on to become the most expensive in United States history. Justice Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in the race, defeated conservative candidate Brad Schimel.
A Taylor victory in April would extend the liberal majority to 5-2, while a Lazar win would maintain the current 4-3 split.
This year marks the third time in the last four years that Wisconsinites are heading to the polls to elect a state Supreme Court justice in an open-seat race. Outgoing conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley announced in August that she wasn’t seeking reelection in a scathing statement in which she called on the conservative movement to “take stock of its failures, identify the problem, and fix it.”
Taylor, who got in the race last May, was appointed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to the Dane County Circuit Court bench in 2020. She previously served for about 10 years in the state Legislature and was known as one of the most liberal members. Before joining the state Assembly in 2011, Taylor served as public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She’s been a judge on the Madison-based District IV Court of Appeals since 2023.
Lazar has been on the Waukesha-based District 2 Court of Appeals since 2022. She previously served as a Waukesha County judge, an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorneys General J.B. Van Hollen and Brad Schimel, and as an attorney in private practice.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Chris Taylor polling ahead of Maria Lazar in WI Supreme Court race
Reporting by Mary Spicuzza, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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