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Steve Kornacki lays out the key dynamics shaping today’s elections in Georgia and Wisconsin before the results roll in. Plus, we explore how President Donald Trump’s escalating threats against Iran are drawing blowback from some Republicans.
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— Adam Wollner
What to watch for in Georgia and Wisconsin tonight
Analysis by Steve Kornacki
Georgia and Wisconsin have come to loom large in every presidential election. As a result, just about every election in either state is seen as offering some kind of potential tea leaf about the direction of national politics.
Here’s what to watch for in Georgia and Wisconsin tonight:
Georgia’s 14th District
Republican Clay Fuller is the prohibitive favorite in the runoff to fill the seat of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The northwest Georgia district voted for Donald Trump by 37 points in 2024, so the suspense mainly has to do with the final margin.
In previous House special elections during Trump’s second term, Democrats have posted sizable improvements compared to the 2024 presidential election. In each district where there has been a special election, the Democratic candidate has performed on net between 13 and 22 points better than Kamala Harris did in 2024. Much of this can be attributed to the disproportionately high motivation of the party’s base, which can cause significant swings in low-turnout special elections.
In fact, this is something we already saw in the preliminary election here on March 10, when candidates from all parties ran on the same ballot. The combined vote share was 59% for all the Republican candidates and 39% for all the Democratic candidates. That’s a 20-point gap that represented a 17-point net improvement for Democrats compared to Trump’s 2024 margin.
Notably, Democrat Shawn Harris received the most votes last month. But that owed mainly to Harris consolidating most of the Democratic vote ahead of time, while Fuller faced robust competition from several established and well-funded GOP foes. In other words, there’s a lot more room for Fuller to grow his support from March 10 than Harris.
A result closer than 20 points could give Democrats some bragging rights at least, while a wider margin would do the same for Republicans.
Wisconsin Supreme Court
Last year at this time, all eyes were on the Badger State, where control of the court was up for grabs and national money came gushing in by the millions. The Democratic-favored candidate ended up winning that race easily, cementing a liberal majority that is secure no matter what happens today.
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What’s at stake in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race
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Because of last spring’s result, the Democratic-backed candidate, Chris Taylor, is favored to win comfortably today. But given that this is one of the nation’s premier swing states, any surprises in the result will cause a stir. Two particular areas are worth zooming in on as the results come in.
The first is Ozaukee County in the Milwaukee suburbs, which has the second-highest concentration of white residents with college degrees in the state. (Dane County, home of the University of Wisconsin and a deep blue bastion, is No. 1.) Historically, Ozaukee has been a Republican stronghold; it last went for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1964. But like similar well-educated suburbs around the country, it has been moving away from the GOP in recent years.
In 2024, Trump carried Ozaukee by just 10 points, the smallest margin for a Republican since 1964. It was even more noteworthy because it ran counter to the statewide trend, with Trump generally posting improvements around Wisconsin compared to his 2020 performance en route to a victory. In last April’s Supreme Court race, the liberal candidate drew even closer, coming within 4 points of a win in Ozaukee. Could the county flip tonight? It would be a momentous event if it does.
Another area to track is in the largely rural southwest corner of the state, known as the Driftless Area. This is a blue-collar, small-town area that remained loyal to the Democratic Party well into the Barack Obama years. But in 2016, some of Trump’s biggest improvements in the country over previous Republican nominees came here. He gave back some of those gains in 2020, when he narrowly lost the state, but won them all back — and a little more — in 2024.
It was the Driftless Area, though, that was most responsible for the drubbing that the Republican-backed candidate received in last spring’s Supreme Court race. The drop in turnout was far more pronounced here than in economically upscale, Democratic-friendly corners of the state. And the voters that did turn out in the Driftless Area were more likely to be Democratic-aligned. In 2024, Trump won the counties that make up the Driftless Area by 9 points. But last April, those same counties went for the liberal candidate by the same 9-point margin — an 18-point swing.
The “Kornacki Cam” will go live when polls close in Georgia at 7 p.m. ET. Watch here →
MAGA influencers push back on Trump on Iran
By Jonathan Allen, Allan Smith and Peter Nicholas
At the 1988 Republican National Convention, George H.W. Bush swore an oath to his party: “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
He won the election. Then, he raised taxes. The move alienated Republican activists, and GOP lore has long held that he lost re-election because the broken promise tattered his relationship with the party’s base.
Now, President Donald Trump is threatening to destroy Iranian civilization after campaigning in part on a “no new wars“ mantra in 2024. He has said the war is necessary to stop Iran’s leadership from obtaining nuclear weapons and further destabilizing the global order.
His reversal is creating major strains within his own “Make America Great Again” movement, evident in increasingly loud dissent from some of its most prominent media figures, resistance from a growing number of GOP lawmakers and polling.
The roster of conservative luminaries rebuking Trump over Iran this week could have been cut and pasted from a list of his most reliable supporters of the past: Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Turning Point USA’s former communications director Candace Owens, among many others.
Jones and Greene have called for the Cabinet to use the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to declare Trump unable to fulfill his duties and oust him from the Oval Office.
Carlson advised Trump’s military aides to reject any plan to slaughter Iranian civilians, including through the potential use of a nuclear weapon.
“Now it’s time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president, no,” Carlson said on his podcast.
With Congress in recess and Republicans in the chamber typically in lockstep with the president, there has been less explicit resistance from elected officials. But a handful of Republicans in each chamber have said publicly that there are limits to what they are willing to support in the Iran war.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Okla., said last week that Trump should put a stop to hostilities unless he gets specific authorization from Congress, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on a podcast this week that he doesn’t want the U.S. to “blow up civilian infrastructure.”
Follow live Iran war updates →
🗞️ Today’s other top stories
- 🏛️ Meet the new boss: In his first public appearance as acting attorney general, Todd Blanche insisted the Justice Department was not focused on going after Trump’s political enemies. Read more →
- 📝 Epstein saga: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will voluntarily meet with the House Oversight Committee on May 6 to answer questions about his connection to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Read more →
- ➡️ In the states: An Indianapolis council member said more than a dozen bullets were fired at his house and a handwritten note reading “No Data Centers” was left on his doorstep. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.
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