How many Supreme Court justices will the President confirm?
Exactly one Supreme Court confirmation remains the single most likely outcome, but I put it a bit below the market because two confirmations are still a meaningful possibility and zero is not far behind. My independent estimate for exactly one is 41%.
Analysis
The core question is less about ideology than vacancy math. Supreme Court turnover is usually sparse, but over a full presidential term the combination of age, health, and strategic retirement creates a genuine chance of one opening, and a nontrivial chance that an older justice or a second vacancy pushes the total to two. That makes one confirmation the modal outcome, but not a dominant one.
With the court’s current age profile, the older justices are the main drivers of the distribution, while the rest of the bench mostly contributes low-probability tail risk. A single retirement or death is plausible enough to keep exact-one near the top, yet the probability of no vacancy at all remains meaningful and the probability of a second vacancy is higher than a simple intuition might suggest over nearly three more years.
The market’s 45% price on exactly one looks a little rich to me. I think it slightly overweights the clean one-vacancy story and underweights the combined mass on zero and two confirmations, which together look more likely than the market implies. My distribution is therefore a bit flatter, with 1 still the favorite but not by as much as the current price suggests.
Arguments
For
- One confirmation is the most natural midpoint outcome for a 2025-2029 term given the bench’s age structure.
- A single vacancy is more likely than a cluster of vacancies, so exact one has structural support from the typical cadence of Supreme Court turnover.
Against
- Zero confirmations remain very plausible if the justices continue to stay put and no unexpected vacancy occurs.
- Two confirmations are not a long shot over the remaining term, especially if an older justice leaves and another vacancy follows later.
Key drivers
- The remaining term is long enough that one Supreme Court vacancy is plausible, but not long enough to make multiple confirmations the default outcome.
- The oldest justices create most of the downside and upside risk, since one unexpected departure can easily be followed by another in a later year.
- Strategic retirement timing can compress or delay vacancies, making the exact count harder to pin down than the market’s single-number price implies.
Risk factors
- A surprise death, health issue, or retirement among the older justices could quickly shift the outcome from zero to two.
- If no justice chooses to retire and the bench avoids mortality events, the term ends at zero confirmations and the yes bet loses outright.
Scenarios
Best case
An older justice retires or passes away once, the President confirms one replacement, and no second vacancy opens before the term ends.
Most likely
One vacancy opens at some point in the term and is filled, but the chance of either no vacancies or a second vacancy keeps exact-one only modestly favored.
Worst case
No Supreme Court vacancy occurs before January 2029, or two or more vacancies occur so the exact-one outcome misses.
Outcomes
| Outcome | AI | MKT |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 41% | 45% |
| 2 | 27% | 30% |
| 0 | 25% | 26% |
| 3 | 5% | 5% |
| 4 | 2% | 2% |
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