The risks of partisan judicial elections come down to this: when judges run with a party label, their rulings, their path to the bench, and the public’s trust in their decisions all bend toward politics in measurable ways. Campaign money starts tracking case outcomes. Party loyalty starts outweighing legal skill. And voters, lacking any other cue, start treating judicial races like legislative ones.
Roughly 20 states use partisan elections for at least some level of their courts. Candidates appear on the ballot with a party label next to their name, win a party primary to get there, and compete in general elections funded by the same donors and party committees that back legislative and gubernatorial candidates. The remaining states use nonpartisan elections, merit-based appointment, or some combination. The party label is what changes everything downstream: who gives money, how campaigns are run, and how voters decide.
Donor Money Tracks Judicial Outcomes
The clearest risk is that campaign money shapes decisions. Researchers at Emory University analyzed every state supreme court case across all 50 states over four years and found that elected judges were more likely to rule in favor of business litigants as campaign contributions from business interests increased. That statistical relationship held only for judges elected in partisan elections, not for judges elected in nonpartisan ones.1New York University Law Review. The Partisan Price of Justice: An Empirical Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions The party label itself appears to be the mechanism that turns money into influence.
The money is substantial and growing. Candidates, interest groups, and political parties spent at least $157.3 million on state supreme court races in the 2023–24 cycle, 35 percent more than any previous cycle. A single Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2025 drew more than $100 million in spending. In 2023–24, outside interest groups spent $85 million on judicial races, outpacing the $70 million raised directly by candidates.2Brennan Center for Justice. The Politics of Judicial Elections 2023-24 Much of that outside spending comes from organizations not required to disclose their donors, so neither voters nor the litigants who later appear before those judges can trace who paid for the campaign.
The most dramatic illustration remains Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. Don Blankenship, chairman of Massey Coal, spent $3 million supporting Brent Benjamin’s election to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. That amount exceeded the combined spending of all other Benjamin supporters and Benjamin’s own campaign committee. When a $50 million verdict against Massey came before the court, Justice Benjamin refused to recuse and cast the deciding vote to overturn it. The U.S. Supreme Court held that due process required his recusal, establishing that the Constitution demands a judge step aside when a party in the case had a “significant and disproportionate influence” in putting the judge on the bench.3Justia Law. Caperton v A T Massey Coal Co – 556 US 868 (2009) The standard only catches the most extreme cases. Smaller contributions and bundled donations rarely trigger constitutional recusal, and the decision whether to step aside is usually left to the judge whose impartiality is in question.
Primary Politics Pulls Judges Toward Party Positions
Winning a party primary requires appealing to primary voters, who tend to be more ideologically committed than the general electorate. That pushes judicial candidates to stake out sharper partisan positions during the campaign, and a judge who has publicly aligned with a party’s platform to survive a primary may feel locked into those positions once on the bench. The result is decisions that can look more like political outcomes than neutral applications of law, which is precisely what judicial impartiality is supposed to prevent.
Party Label Outweighs Judicial Quality
Partisan elections also shift who wins. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that a judge’s quality, measured by bar association ratings, had little effect on their vote share or probability of winning in partisan general elections. Quality had a substantial effect in nonpartisan elections and even in partisan primaries.4National Bureau of Economic Research. Elections and the Quality of Public Officials: Evidence from US State Courts
The implication is worth sitting with. In a partisan general election, voters are sorting by party, not by the candidate’s record. A highly qualified judge running under the wrong party label in a given district loses to a less qualified opponent under the right one. Straight-ticket voting amplifies the effect: judicial candidates can win or lose on the strength of their party’s presidential or gubernatorial candidate at the top of the ballot, regardless of their own fitness for the bench. Over time, this rewards political networking over legal skill and can discourage talented lawyers without partisan connections from seeking judicial office at all.
Voters Have Little to Go On Besides the Party Label
Judicial races receive a fraction of the media coverage that legislative or executive races get. In a National Judicial College survey, 85 percent of judges estimated that no more than 30 percent of voters are well-informed enough to cast a responsible vote in judicial elections. One judge noted that without the ballot in front of them, most voters could not even name the judicial candidates in a typical election.5The National Judicial College. Judges Think Few Voters Know Enough to Make Informed Choices in Judicial Elections
In that information vacuum, the party label does all the work. A voter who knows nothing about either judicial candidate but prefers one party’s approach to governance votes the party line. That shortcut makes some sense for legislative races, where party affiliation genuinely predicts policy positions. It tells you almost nothing about how a judge will handle contract disputes, custody cases, or evidentiary rulings. The daily work of judging has little in common with the partisan issues that drive voters to identify with a party in the first place.
Public and Judicial Confidence Both Suffer
Courts depend on the public’s willingness to accept their rulings, and that acceptance rests on the belief that decisions turn on law rather than money or party. Partisan elections make that belief harder to hold. A poll commissioned by Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center found that 87 percent of voters believe judicial campaign support, whether direct contributions or independent spending, influences judicial decisions, up sharply from earlier polls that consistently found around 75 percent.6IAALS. New Poll Shows That Voters Have Increasing Concerns About Judicial Impartiality
Judges share the concern. In a survey of more than 2,400 state judges, 26 percent said campaign contributions have at least some influence on judicial decisions, and another 46 percent said “just a little.” Only about a third said contributions have no influence at all.7Judicature. Does Campaign Money Create the Perception of Judicial Bias When even sitting judges doubt the system’s integrity, the legitimacy problem runs deep. People are far less likely to comply with and respect decisions from institutions they believe are compromised.
How Other Selection Methods Compare
These risks are not inherent to every method of choosing judges. They are specific to, or significantly amplified by, the partisan model.
Nonpartisan elections drop the party label from the ballot. They do not eliminate campaign spending or interest-group pressure, but they appear to break the statistical link between donations and judicial decisions that partisan elections produce.1New York University Law Review. The Partisan Price of Justice: An Empirical Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions
Merit selection, often called the Missouri Plan, uses a nonpartisan nominating commission to send a shortlist of qualified candidates to the governor, who appoints the judge. The judge then faces periodic retention elections, with no opponent, where voters decide whether to keep them. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia use some version of this approach for their highest courts.8Ballotpedia. Assisted Appointment of State Court Judges It reduces the fundraising pressure and party influence that define partisan elections, though critics argue it shifts power to the legal establishment that dominates nominating commissions.
No system fully insulates judges from political pressure. The evidence does show, consistently, that partisan elections produce the strongest measurable link between campaign money and judicial behavior, the weakest connection between judicial quality and electoral success, and the deepest public skepticism about whether the courts are dispensing justice or favors.