Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship/State Supreme Court Control Compared to State Government Trifectas

Breakdown of Justices by Confidence Categories →

← Overview of Confidence Scoring Results

State Partisanship

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Overview

Methodology and defintions • Overview of Confidence Scoring Results • State Supreme Court Control Compared to State Government Trifectas • Breakdown of Justices by Confidence Categories

The Most and Least Divided State Supreme Courts

The Least Homogeneous State Supreme Courts • The Most Homogeneous State Supreme Courts • The Percentage of the Population that Lives in States with Democratic- or Republican-Controlled Courts

Judicial Selection Methods and Partisanship

Partisanship of Justices Across Judicial Selection Methods • Comparison of Appointment Methods by Court Balance Score and Median Court Score • Difficulties with Our Analysis of Pure Partisanship Scores by Selection Method

Partisan Balance Rules

Retention Elections and Vacancy Appointments

Retention Elections • Vacancy Appointments

Confidence Scores

Highest Confidence Scores • Indeterminate Justice Confidence Scores • Pure Partisan Scores

June 2020

A state government trifecta is a term that describes when one political party controls the governorship and both chambers of the legislature in a state.

As of July 2020, there were 36 state government trifectas: 15 Democratic and 21 Republican. Fourteen states had divided governments. There are more courts with Republican majorities than Republican state government trifectas. There are the same number of courts with Democratic majorities as there are with Democratic state trifectas.

'	Democratic	Republican	Indeterminate/Split
Number of trifectas (percent of total)	15 (30%)	21 (42%)	14 (28%)
Number of court majorities (percent of total)	15 (30%)	27 (54%)	8 (16%)

Below is a table of the states showing the overlap between Confidence Score majorities and trifecta status. The columns refer to court control and the highlights correspond to the state’s trifecta status:

Democrat controlled (15):	Republican controlled (27):	Split control (8):
California	Alabama	Kentucky
Colorado	Alaska	Maryland
Connecticut	Arizona	Massachusetts
Delaware	Arkansas	Missouri
Hawaii	Florida	Montana
Illinois	Georgia	Nevada
Kansas	Idaho	New Hampshire
Maine	Indiana	Vermont
Minnesota	Iowa
New Mexico	Louisiana
New York	Michigan
North Carolina	Mississippi
Oregon	Nebraska
Pennsylvania	New Jersey
Washington	North Dakota
	Ohio
	Oklahoma
	Rhode Island
	South Carolina
	South Dakota
	Tennessee
	Texas
	Utah
	Virginia
	West Virginia
	Wisconsin
	Wyoming

About the authors

Samuel Postell is a staff writer on Ballotpedia's Marquee Team and a lecturer at the University of Dallas.

Luke Seeley is a staff writer on Ballotpedia's Marquee Team.

Heidi Jung developed the graphics.

Ballotpedia CEO Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia COO Gwen Beattie, Editor-in-Chief Geoff Pallay, and Ballotpedia Vice President of external relations Alison Prange reviewed the report and provided feedback as did editor Cory Eucalitto. Outside reviewers included Dr. G. Alan Tarr from Rutgers University, and Dr. Aman McLeod from the University of Idaho College of Law.