Across the country, races that will determine the ideological balances of state supreme courts in the coming years are playing out, drawing increased attention from Democrats as the importance of these seats becomes more apparent.
Unlike in 2025, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal-leaning majority of justices was at stake, there are no states this year where a Supreme Court is at threat of flipping.
However, this year’s races — especially in Montana and North Carolina — will determine whether their state’s highest courts could flip in 2028. As state supreme courts make increasingly consequential decisions about abortion access, transgender rights, and redistricting, more political groups are joining the fray with the hope that their side will eventually take judicial power.
“The people getting involved in state supreme court elections are very sophisticated political players, and so they are strategizing cycles out in terms of trying to take, reclaim, or solidify majorities on state supreme courts,” said Douglas Keith, the deputy director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice and co-founding editor of State Court Report.
The groups aiming to take over state supreme courts have skewed right in the past few decades. But in recent years, Democrats and liberal groups have begun to catch up. Like their Republican colleagues, these groups have strategized both financially and legislatively to move state supreme court majorities in their favor.
Only 18 states hold competitive supreme court elections
“Not every state has a state supreme court that’s elected directly by the voters,” said Louis Jacobson, a senior columnist at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan publication of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“Often it’s appointed by the governor and confirmed by the legislature,” Jacobson said. “But for the states that do have it, it’s important because state supreme courts often rule on important issues.”
Over 40 states use elections in some form to determine which candidates become justices on their state’s Supreme Court. In 19 states, voters can allow state Supreme Court justices to stay in office through retention elections, or races where they confirm an unopposed incumbent justice often previously appointed to the position for office.
Of the remaining states, 13 use nonpartisan elections, eight have partisan elections, and Michigan combines the two — it holds a partisan primary and a nonpartisan general election.
This means, in effect, that only 22 states have competitive supreme court elections. Though a majority of these states have nonpartisan elections, justices can often be “morally liberal or conservative,” Jacobson said, resulting in ideological majorities on these state supreme courts.
It’s why even nonpartisan state supreme court elections get attention from Democratic and Republican groups. “Changing control of the state supreme court is a multi-cycle process because it’s not like the whole court is up at the same time,” Jacobson said.
The increased national profile of these institutions has in some ways been a boon, especially in terms of increasing voter turnout. For example, nearly 2.4 million people cast ballots in Wisconsin’s nonpartisan supreme court elections in April 2025 in a race that determined whether the court would flip.
But in some ways, the increased attention has also resulted in drastic changes to these elections — both from political groups increasingly trying to influence judicial election outcomes and politicians hoping to change the state supreme court election process in their party’s favor.
‘The Wild West’
Outside groups have increased spending in state supreme court elections, with the 2025 Wisconsin race serving as a prime example. Democrats, Republicans, and other groups spent over $140 million in the race between conservative Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel and Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford.
Out-of-state donors, including high-profile figures such as billionaire Elon Musk, who promised $1 million checks to conservative Wisconsin residents voting in the 2025 election, also involved themselves in the election, which Keith said shaped up to be the most expensive state supreme court election in history.
Crawford eventually triumphed over Schimel, preserving the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority in a state with a Republican-led legislature. This dynamic isn’t uncommon. But it’s increasingly become a point of frustration for GOP legislatures that have tried to push through reforms that courts strike down, resulting in several attempts to change the supreme court elections’ processes.
This year Utah Republicans added two seats to their state supreme court following court orders that prevented redistricting from taking place. In Montana, GOP state legislators have continued with their long-standing campaign to remove justices from the court who blocked them from imposing restrictions on abortion and access to medical care for transgender residents in the state.
In some cases, legislator intervention has been enough to flip state supreme courts. In 2018 and 2022, North Carolina and Ohio respectively changed their supreme court elections from nonpartisan to partisan, which ultimately led to conservative majorities taking power.
“It is the Wild West when it comes to legislative manipulation of state Supreme Courts,” Keith said.
The only instance of Democrats engaging in similar legislative tactics to preserve or change a state’s ideological majority was the 2021 shift of Supreme Court election districts in Illinois. This allowed a liberal majority to remain in place.
Democrats in general have engaged in less political and financial maneuvering than Republicans to create state supreme courts favorable to them, Keith said. But in recent years, the party has been catching up to its GOP counterparts in terms of funneling funding into these races.
The ‘dynamic has very much changed’
For a long time, Republicans were the only party meaningfully involved in state supreme court elections. Through groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee, which brings together state-level GOP leaders across the nation and supports candidates in down-ballot races, the party has consistently outspent Democrats in supreme court elections for over a decade.
“The Republican State Leadership Committee and groups on the right really started to build up their spending in these races around 2010, and for the next decade that followed after that, groups on the right dramatically outspent groups on the left when you looked nationally in state supreme court elections,” Keith said.
But that’s no longer the case. “2022 was the first cycle where we saw parity,” Keith said. “Groups on the left and groups on the right spent about the same nationally. 2024 was the first cycle in which groups on the left actually outspent groups on the right, and so that dynamic has very much changed.”
Interest groups and the battle for abortion rights were the main drivers of spending in judicial elections in 2023 and 2024, the Brennan Center for Justice found. The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 led to more donors and interest groups getting involved in judicial races that would determine the future of abortion rights within a state.
Of the $157 million spent on state supreme court and other judicial races during the 2023-2024 cycle, 64 percent was spent by left-leaning groups, such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Everytown for Gun Safety. Interest groups also outspent candidates for state supreme courts for the first time, sinking over $80 million into the various races.
Spending in state supreme court races often spikes when a majority is at stake, Keith said. Since no court has a majority at stake this year, outside spending has not reached the high recorded in 2025.
But increased financial backing from Democrats and Republicans can be expected to be the norm moving forward, Keith said. Voter interest in these state institutions could also be expected to increase as a result of these courts’ consequential decisions.
“What is happening with these high-profile state supreme court decisions on these most salient political questions is forcing the public to rethink what these courts do, and expanding the public's understanding of just how important these courts are and the role they play,” Keith said. “More people, I think, are appreciating that these courts have the final say on questions of state law.”