Wisconsin’s election today will be closely monitored as it affects the state’s high court partisanship, and abortion rights and election rules are frequent campaign topics. The contest between Daniel Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice, and Janet Protasevich, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, should be one of the most important and expensive elections in the country this year.

Judicial elections in Wisconsin are officially non-partisan, but the races are becoming increasingly political. While in the past, voters typically voted for judges with whom they were not ideologically aligned, Democratic counties now strongly favor liberal judicial candidates and Republican counties favor conservative ones.

This trend has intensified in recent years as partisan polarization has increased at the national level and as overt partisanship has crept into the dialogue between court candidates.

It wasn’t always like that. During the 1980s and 1990s, racing was largely seen as less biased and more dependent on support from leaders in the legal and law enforcement community, according to Charles Franklin, survey director at Marquette University School of Law. Hello studied the relationship between ideological voting patterns in state supreme court and presidential races.

“The Supreme Court races at the time seemed to be about who got more approval from sheriffs and prosecutors than anything else,” he said.

While many candidates in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s had clear ideological leanings, there was almost no connection between electoral support for judicial candidates and presidential candidates from the respective political party. A prime example is Dane County, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2000, a majority of voters in Dane County voted for Diane Sykes, the conservative candidate for judge, as well as Al Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate.

Over the next decade, partisan views began to infiltrate racing. In a particularly vicious 2008 campaign, Conservative candidate Michael J. Gableman launched a television ad falsely accusing his opponent, the only black justice on the state Supreme Court, of securing an early release for a rapist who was also black. Mr. Gableman won by a small margin. Since leaving the bench, he has led a biased investigation into whether there was election fraud in Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.

But since the election of Republican Scott Walker as governor in 2010, the races have become more overtly partisan. to remember him. The 2011 Supreme Court race was widely viewed as a referendum on Mr. Walker’s policies. David Prosser, the Conservative candidate, narrowly won the election, which was decided by 7,000 votes and required a recount. This race was also one of the first times in the state that the ideological voting patterns in the judicial race almost perfectly mirrored partisan votes in the last presidential election.

A 2015 campaign to change public finance laws led to a significant increase in political spending by allowing unlimited donations to political parties. Parties could transfer large sums to candidates, and enhanced coordination with outside groups was allowed. This year’s race will break records for refereeing competition spending, with candidates and outside groups spending three times the cost of any previous competition.

This election should be the most politically oriented to date, Mr. Franklin said, citing “growing money, growing ideological signals, growing ties to party voting.”

“This election is something more,” he added. “Much more.”

If the 2011 contest was seen as a referendum on Mr. Walker, today’s is seen by many as a referendum on abortion and whether the issue will continue to inspire voters in the state. The winning candidate could be a pivotal vote later this year when the court considers an 1849 trigger law that makes abortion a felony in the state except to save the mother’s life. The law took effect after Roe v. Wade was flipped. Judge Protasevich has been outspoken in her support of maintaining access to abortion, while Judge Kelly has been less outspoken on the issue, although he has received endorsements and donations from anti-abortion groups.

Mr. Franklin sees the race as a test of Wisconsin voters’ support for the more open, partisan discussion of “values” that has become a hallmark of Judge Protasevich’s campaign.

“If Protasevich wins, it will demonstrate that open campaigning for political values ​​can reach voters in judicial elections,” he said. “If she loses, there will be huge doubts.”

Reid J. Epstein made a report.