Pa. Supreme Court justices rarely lose seats in retention elections, so why is this year's race so important?
Pennsylvania voters will decide in November whether to retain three state Supreme Court justices – all Democrats – in an election with major ramifications for the composition of the commonwealth's top appellate court.
Justices on the seven-member Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Democratic majority, are each elected to serve 10-year terms. When justices already serving on the bench reach the end of their cycles, they face retention elections with simple "yes" or "no" votes on whether to give them another 10-year term. A judge needs a majority to retain the seat. Partisan judicial elections are only held when the court has vacancies, most often because a justice has reached the state's age limit of 75 years old. Rarely do seats open up as a result of a justice losing a retention election, which has happened only once since 2000.
"Pennsylvania traditionally has between 25% and one-third of people vote no on judicial retention candidates," said David Senoff, a Philadelphia-based attorney who has helped lead past retention campaigns for both Democrats and Republicans on the state Supreme Court. "If you have a really organized 'vote no' campaign, maybe you can get that number close to 50%."
The three justices up for retention this year – Kevin Dougherty, Christine Donohue and David Wecht – each were elected to the Supreme Court in 2015 in a historically unusual cycle with three vacancies. The three Democrats soundly outperformed their GOP opponents that year, capturing a majority on the court after Republicans had held the advantage for more than a decade.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/pennsylvania-supreme-court-2025-retention-election-democrats-vote/
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