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On examination of the evidence, the motive for a questioning supreme court justice is leaning to supporting the other side. https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature

• jessriedel 9y ago
  It's a surprisingly modest lean: > That data shows that Kennedy is no different from the rest of the court: You don’t want to be on the receiving end of his questions. When Kennedy votes for the respondent (which would be the Wisconsin Democrats, in this case) he directs 93.3 words to them (57.5 percent of his speech). When he votes against the respondent, he directs 102.0 words to them (61.1 percent of his speech).
  • stevenwoo 9y ago
    I was chose lean instead of favor purposefully! But Kennedy's zero/all the words ratio for this case may tip his hand.
    • TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      > Historically, he directed zero words toward the party he went on to vote for 272 times, out of 1,022 cases in this data set. He directed zero words toward the party he wound up voting against only 177 times. So about a 60%-40% split when he has zero words. It does look like he is leaning in favor of the Wisconsin Democrats, but still far from a sure thing.
    • jessriedel 9y ago
      Yep, I wasn't suggesting your summary was inaccurate. I just found it really interesting and wanted to share.