North Carolina judicial elections, 2014

Four justices of the seven-member North Carolina Supreme Court and four judges of the 15-member North Carolina Court of Appeals were elected by North Carolina voters on November 4, 2014, concurrently with other state elections. Terms for seats on each court are eight years.

Assessing the election results, Politifact writer Louis Jacobson noted that Supreme Court races in North Carolina and other states yielded "better-than-average results" for Democrats, who otherwise suffered heavy defeats across the country. "In a series of hotly contested North Carolina contests, two Democratic-leaning judges [Ervin and Hudson] prevailed, one Democrat [Beasley] was leading in a very close race, and one Republican [Chief Justice Martin] was re-elected," Jacobson wrote. At the Court of Appeals level, two Democrats, Lucy Inman and Mark Davis, and one Republican, John Tyson, were elected in contested races, while another Republican, Donna Stroud, was re-elected without opposition.

North Carolina ranked second among all states in total spending on judicial election campaigns in 2014.

Chief Justice Sarah Parker stepped down from her position on the Court in 2014 because she reached the mandatory retirement age of 72. Her seat would have been on the November 2014 election ballot in any event, since she was elected Chief Justice in 2006 to an eight-year term.

Associate Justice Mark Martin, who had already announced he was running for Chief Justice, was appointed by Gov. Pat McCrory to take the position on September 1, 2014.

North Carolina Superior Court Judge Ola Lewis, who at first announced her intention to challenge Associate Justice Beasley, instead filed to run for Chief Justice after Attorney Mike Robinson announced he had been invited to run for the Beasley seat by the Executive Committee of the North Carolina Republican Party. Lewis, like Martin, is a Republican. No registered Democrat or unaffiliated candidate filed to run for the chief justice seat. North Carolina judicial elections are nonpartisan.

Martin won his third term on the Supreme Court, and first term as chief justice, by taking 72.3 percent of the vote.

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