Judicial Hub

For the 2026 midterm elections, we at Judicial Hub are tracking 60 races that voters will decide across 27 states: 47 races for seats on state high courts, in 23 states, and 13 ballot measures, in 11 states. This is the first time we are doing so.

Judicial elections don’t all work the same way. In retention elections, voters decide whether a sitting justice should stay on the bench. Outside of retention elections, candidates run against each other for a seat in partisan, semi-partisan and nonpartisan elections. In partisan elections, candidates run with a party label. In nonpartisan elections, no party appears on the ballot. Michigan’s semi-partisan elections fall in between: parties nominate candidates, but the ballot doesn’t show party affiliation.

Of the 47 seats we are tracking, 20 are retention elections across 12 states. Oklahoma has the most with five, followed by California, Kansas, New Mexico and Wyoming with two each. Another 13 seats in six states are nonpartisan elections, led by Washington with five. Twelve seats in four states are partisan elections, and Texas accounts for seven of them. The last two seats, both in Michigan, are semi-partisan elections.

In seven states (Alabama, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Washington), this year’s races could change the partisan balance of the state’s high court. In Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, every candidate appears on the ballot with a party label, so voters can choose the candidate of their preferred party. In Michigan, parties nominate the candidates, so their affiliation is easy to identify even though the ballot doesn’t show it. In Montana and Washington, party affiliation is not shown on the ballot and is harder to determine, but we have attempted to identify each candidate’s affiliation here and in our other project, Seats of the States.

Of the 13 measures we’re tracking, voters in Georgia and Montana will decide whether judicial elections must be nonpartisan. Montana’s measure would write into the constitution that judicial elections, which are already nonpartisan, remain so. Georgia’s would extend the nonpartisan requirement, which already applies to nearly every other court in the state, to probate judges. In North Dakota and South Dakota, voters will decide whether future constitutional amendments need 60% of the vote. In Colorado, voters will decide whether all future ballot questions must be written in plain language at an eighth-grade reading level, and whether any changes to a final congressional map must be approved by the state’s independent redistricting commission and the state Supreme Court.