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New-Style Campaigns in State Supreme Court Retention Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

David Hughes
David Hughes*
Affiliation:
Auburn University at Montgomery, Montgomery, AL, USA
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Abstract

Scholarly research finds that partisan, hard-fought, expensive, and churlish state supreme court campaigns increase voter participation and their support for challenger candidates. These insights, however, are drawn nearly exclusively from competitive state supreme court elections. Little is known about voter behavior in uncompetitive retention elections. Traditionally, these races are not salient to the public given that incumbents raise and spend little-to-no money, and campaigns, parties, and political action committees air few (if any) advertisements. Since 2010, however, such behavior has become more commonplace. I assess voter participation and incumbent performance in 178 state supreme court retention elections from 2002 to 2014. I find that expensive, churlish retention elections are likely to increase voter turnout and to hurt incumbents' efforts to win retention.

Keywords

judicial politicsjudicial electionsvoting behaviorpolitical behaviorcampaignsinterest groups and elections
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 127 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018

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