Last week, I noted that the results of the Wisconsin supreme court primary — in which two progressive judges combined for 54 percent of the vote compared to 46 percent for the judicial conservatives — seemed like an ominous sign for conservatives. 

But Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight took a closer look and found that there “has been little relationship between the combined liberal-conservative margin in the primary and the liberal-conservative margin in the general.”

Another hopeful history lesson for conservatives in Wisconsin was the 2019 supreme court race in which the conservative-backed candidate Brian Hagedorn scored a stunning upset victory after being outspent by an enormous margin and trailing in the polls.