Arkansas Supreme Court elections, 2022
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The terms of three Arkansas Supreme Court justices expired on December 31, 2022. The three seats were up for nonpartisan election on May 24, 2022. A runoff election was scheduled for November 8, 2022. The filing deadline was March 1, 2022.
Arkansas was one of 30 states that held elections for state supreme court in 2022. That year, 84 of the 344 seats on state supreme courts were up for election. Of those, 64 were held by nonpartisan justices, 13 were held by Republican justices, and eight were held by Democratic justices. For more on the partisan affiliation of state supreme court justices, click here. For an overview of state supreme court elections in 2022, click here.
Candidates and results
Position 2
General runoff election
General runoff election for Arkansas Supreme Court Position 2
Incumbent Robin Wynne defeated Chris Carnahan in the general runoff election for Arkansas Supreme Court Position 2 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Robin Wynne (Nonpartisan) | 58.4 | 450,094 |
 | Chris Carnahan (Nonpartisan)  | 41.6 | 321,123 | |
| Total votes: 771,217 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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General election
General election for Arkansas Supreme Court Position 2
Incumbent Robin Wynne and Chris Carnahan advanced to a runoff. They defeated David Sterling in the general election for Arkansas Supreme Court Position 2 on May 24, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Robin Wynne (Nonpartisan) | 49.5 | 202,815 |
| ✔ | | Chris Carnahan (Nonpartisan) | 28.8 | 117,859 |
 | David Sterling (Nonpartisan) | 21.7 | 88,938 | |
| Total votes: 409,612 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Position 6
General election
General election for Arkansas Supreme Court Position 6
Incumbent Karen R. Baker defeated Gunner DeLay in the general election for Arkansas Supreme Court Position 6 on May 24, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Karen R. Baker (Nonpartisan) | 64.0 | 262,043 |
 | Gunner DeLay (Nonpartisan) | 36.0 | 147,481 | |
| Total votes: 409,524 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Position 7
General election
The general election was canceled. Rhonda Wood (Nonpartisan) won without appearing on the ballot.
Voting information
- See also: Voting in Arkansas
About the Arkansas Supreme Court
- See also: Arkansas Supreme Court
There are seven justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court, each elected to eight-year terms. They compete in nonpartisan primaries (occurring at the same time as the primary elections for other state officials) in which the candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote wins the seat. If no candidate garners a majority of the vote, the top two candidates compete in a runoff during the general election.[1]
Political composition
This was the political composition of the supreme court heading into the 2022 election.
| ■ Karen R. Baker | Elected in 2010 | |
| ■ Barbara Womack Webb | Elected in 2020 | |
| ■ Courtney Hudson Goodson | Elected in 2010 | |
| ■ Dan Kemp | Elected in 2016 | |
| ■ Shawn Womack | Elected in 2016 | |
| ■ Rhonda Wood | Elected in 2014 | |
| ■ Robin Wynne | Elected in 2014 |
Selection
Selection of supreme court justices in Arkansas occurs through the nonpartisan election of judges.[1] Judges' terms begin on January 1 of the year after they were elected.[2] In the event of a midterm vacancy, an interim judge is selected by the governor. This appointee will serve until the next general election taking place four or more months after the vacancy occurred.[1]
Qualifications
To serve on this court, a justice must be:
- at least 30 years old;
- of good moral character;
- learned in the law;
- a U.S. citizen and state resident for at least two years; and
- a legal practitioner for at least eight years.[1]
Arkansas does not use judicial nominating commissions to screen or select potential candidates.[3]
Selection of the chief justice
The court's chief justice is selected by voters at large and serves in that capacity for a full eight-year term.[1]
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: Determiners and Dissenters (2021)
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: Determiners and Dissenters, a study on how state supreme court justices decided the cases that came before them. Our goal was to determine which justices ruled together most often, which frequently dissented, and which courts featured the most unanimous or contentious decisions.
The study tracked the position taken by each state supreme court justice in every case they decided in 2020, then tallied the number of times the justices on the court ruled together. We identified the following types of justices:
- We considered two justices opinion partners if they frequently concurred or dissented together throughout the year.
- We considered justices a dissenting minority if they frequently opposed decisions together as a -1 minority.
- We considered a group of justices a determining majority if they frequently determined cases by a +1 majority throughout the year.
- We considered a justice a lone dissenter if he or she frequently dissented alone in cases throughout the year.
Summary of cases decided in 2020
- Number of justices: 7
- Number of cases: 257
- Percentage of cases with a unanimous ruling: 55.6% (143)
- Justice most often writing the majority opinion: Justice Dan Kemp (35)
- Per curiam decisions: 54
- Concurring opinions: 30
- Justice with most concurring opinions: Justice Josephine Hart (18)
- Dissenting opinions: 97
- Justice with most dissenting opinions: Justice Josephine Hart (76)
For the study's full set of findings in Arkansas, click here.
Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)
- See also: Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation, based on a variety of factors. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on the political or ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. To arrive at confidence scores we analyzed each justice's past partisan activity by collecting data on campaign finance, past political positions, party registration history, as well as other factors. The five categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[4]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
We used the Confidence Scores of each justice to develop a Court Balance Score, which attempted to show the balance among justices with Democratic, Republican, and Indeterminate Confidence Scores on a court. Courts with higher positive Court Balance Scores included justices with higher Republican Confidence Scores, while courts with lower negative Court Balance Scores included justices with higher Democratic Confidence Scores. Courts closest to zero either had justices with conflicting partisanship or justices with Indeterminate Confidence Scores.[5]
Arkansas had a Court Balance Score of 3.57, indicating Republican control of the court. In total, the study found that there were 15 states with Democrat-controlled courts, 27 states with Republican-controlled courts, and eight states with Split courts. The map below shows the court balance score of each state.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Arkansas," archived October 2, 2014
- ↑ Arkansas.gov, "Elected Officials," accessed May 20, 2014
- ↑ American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Arkansas; Judicial Nominating Commissions," archived October 2, 2014
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ The Court Balance Score is calculated by finding the average partisan Confidence Score of all justices on a state supreme court. For example, if a state has justices on the state supreme court with Confidence Scores of 4, -2, 2, 14, -2, 3, and 4, the Court Balance is the average of those scores: 3.3. Therefore, the Confidence Score on the court is Mild Republican. The use of positive and negative numbers in presenting both Confidence Scores and Court Balance Scores should not be understood to that either a Republican or Democratic score is positive or negative. The numerical values represent their distance from zero, not whether one score is better or worse than another.
Federal courts:
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of Arkansas, Western District of Arkansas • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: Eastern District of Arkansas, Western District of Arkansas
State courts:
Arkansas Supreme Court • Arkansas Court of Appeals • Arkansas Circuit Courts • Arkansas District Courts • Arkansas City Courts
State resources:
Courts in Arkansas • Arkansas judicial elections • Judicial selection in Arkansas
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