How many Supreme Court justices will the President confirm?

The core question is not whether a president can confirm a justice in the abstract, but whether at least one vacancy appears during the term. Because Supreme Court justices serve life tenure and only leave through death, retirement, resignation, or removal, there is no scheduled vacancy built into the Court’s structure, so the event depends entirely on unpredictable turnover. That makes zero confirmations a real possibility, but over a four-year presidential term, the base rate for at least one vacancy is still substantial, especially given the age and tenure profile of the current Court.

Exactly one confirmation looks like the single most plausible point estimate because it combines two facts: one vacancy is fairly likely, but multiple vacancies are harder to get in a single term. The current market’s top outcome is 1 at 47%, which is directionally sensible, but I think the market is somewhat underweighting the chance of exactly one opening and over-discounting how often a single vacancy is the modal outcome in a normal presidential term. The long odds on 3 or 4 confirmations also make sense, since those outcomes would require an unusually high cluster of departures in a short window.

Compared with the market, I would price 1 a bit higher and 0 a bit lower. The market’s 20% for zero confirmations seems a little too pessimistic about turnover risk, while its 30% for two confirmations looks slightly rich relative to the fact that multiple Supreme Court departures in one term are possible but still uncommon. Confirmation politics matter, but they are secondary here; the dominant uncertainty is whether a seat opens at all, and on that dimension exactly one confirmation is the cleanest central case.