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I was interested in seeing how bipartisan Obama's federal judge nominations were compared to Trump's, so I tried to do some basic number crunching based on the confirmation votes vs. party makeup of the Senate.
I gathered vote counts for each SCOTUS, Appeals, and District court confirmation. For unanimous consent/voice votes, I used 95 as the total number of "yes" votes.
Also, for each confirmation, I noted how many Dems/Ind vs. Rep Senators there were.
Also, for each confirmation, I noted how many Dems/Ind vs. Rep Senators there were.
Then I calculated a simple "Bipartisan Score" by subtracting the Dem/Ind (in Obama's case) or Rep (in Trump's case) total from the total number of "yes" votes. Not perfect, but good enough.
The idea being that non-partisan nominations would yield a high margin vs partisan ones.
The idea being that non-partisan nominations would yield a high margin vs partisan ones.
Also, Obama had 326 picks vs. Trump's 216, so I normalized Trump's numbers so that they were the equivalent of 326 picks.
The results weren't as spectacular as I was expecting, but they were still pretty lopsided.
Using 2 votes or less as the threshold for a "highly partisan" nominee, Obama had 21 "highly partisan" picks in 326 confirmations. Trump has 98 (normalized, actual is 65).
Using 2 votes or less as the threshold for a "highly partisan" nominee, Obama had 21 "highly partisan" picks in 326 confirmations. Trump has 98 (normalized, actual is 65).
It gets a little tighter, but still lopsided when you look at just the 96 confirmations that happened after Reid went nuclear (Nov 13) and before the Senate flipped in 2015.
Obama had 44 "highly partisan" picks (normalized, 13 actual) vs. Trump's 98 (normalized, 65 actual).
Obama had 44 "highly partisan" picks (normalized, 13 actual) vs. Trump's 98 (normalized, 65 actual).
I'd love for something to be objectively conclusive from these numbers, but the reality is you could make arguments for both sides.
To me, it's pretty clear that Dems never tried that hard to swing the court that far left by putting super progressive judges up for confirmation.
To me, it's pretty clear that Dems never tried that hard to swing the court that far left by putting super progressive judges up for confirmation.
Of course, what Republicans will see in the numbers is that they were "oh so gracious" with their votes for Obama's picks, where Democrats have been hell-bent on stonewalling all of Trump's picks.
That doesn't quite seem to be the case, though. Looking at the votes on the whole, over half of Trump's 216 nominees have passed with more than 20 votes over the number of Republican Senators.
To me, this suggests Dems have been willing to confirm reasonable judges, but Trump and team have been relatively unwilling to put forward nominees that are middle-of-the-road enough to garner consistent bipartisan support.
