'Very big deal': Little-discussed election result said to show positive progressive trend

While Democrats anxiously brace for Donald Trump’s return to the White House for a second term in which he is expected to load the federal judiciary with hard-right judicial picks, election results nationwide paint a surprisingly promising picture for progressives, according to one analysis.

Some of the less talked about election results that have a big impact on courts across the country were won in state Supreme Courts where voters across the country sent liberal justices, Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote Tuesday. And that’s “a very big deal” for progressives across the country, he said, especially as federal courts have shifted rightward.

“The overall trend, though, is a positive one for Democrats, with plenty of signs that voters on the left and center are paying more attention to these races,” Stern wrote. “Abortion surely helped to activate voters in a post-Roe landscape where state Supreme Courts have the final word on reproductive rights.”

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Stern noted a few other factors likely contributed to the slew of progressive justices pulling off wins, including in battleground states like Michigan and traditionally red states like Kentucky, Montana, Arkansas and Mississippi. He said “candidate quality” mattered, and added that the left probably benefited from so-called "bullet voters," which he described as “those who showed up to support Trump then ignored the other races."

And, Stern wrote, Democrats still have plenty more pickup opportunities to "fine-tune their approach."

“April will bring (another) election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will (again) determine the balance of power on the bench. Trump may entrench a conservative majority in the federal judiciary for generations. But in states around the country, progressives’ fight for control of the courts will grind on," he said.

Trump saw through three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court during his first term and Democrats fear his next White House stint may bring him the ability to make another appointment.