The Supreme Court as an electoral issue: evidence from three studies

Abstract

Judicial nominations, particularly those to the Supreme Court, have been a salient topic in recent presidential and senate elections. However, there has been little research to determine whether judicial nominations motivate political behavior. Across three studies we demonstrate the important role judicial nominations play in influencing political behavior. In Study 1, we analyze the extent to which voters perceive judicial nominations as an important electoral issue. We find that Republicans—and especially strong Republicans—are more likely to perceive judicial nominations as important. In Study 2, we analyze how congruence with an incumbent Senator's judicial confirmation votes influences voters’ decision to vote for the incumbent. We find that congruence with a Senator's judicial confirmation votes is a strong predictor of vote choice. Finally, in Study 3, we analyze data from an original conjoint experiment aimed at simulating a Senate primary election where voters must select among co-partisans. We find that Republican subjects are more likely to select a primary candidate who prioritizes confirming conservative Supreme Court nominees. Among Democratic subjects, however, we find that Democratic candidates who prioritize the Court might actually suffer negative electoral consequences. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of judicial nominations as an electoral issue.

How voters think about the electoral relevance of the Supreme Court

“…To investigate these questions, this paper couples nationally representative survey data with a survey experiment to explore how Americans connect attitudes about the Supreme Court to their electoral calculus. First, like others (Badas and Simas 2022), we find that the Court ranks as a middling issue of importance in the minds of voters, lagging well behind other issues, such as healthcare or the economy, in terms of importance when American adults are asked to rank the issues on which they evaluate electoral candidates (although we show that diffuse support moderates such evaluations). This does not mean, however, that the Court cannot shift how voters view electoral candidates, per se.…”

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

“…We note here that our use of the 2009 and 2010 CCES distinguishes our paper from Badas and Simas (2022). They use the 2018 CCES to study the nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh-in particular, they compare respondents' reported preferences for confirmation of each nominee to senators' votes on these nominees, and then find that congruence between voter preferences and senators' roll call votes predicts the respondents' vote choices for senators.…”

“…18 Because studies of accountability generally can only measure actual agreement (as opposed to perceptions), this relationship is the one that is usually examined in the literature. Returning to Badas and Simas (2022), they find a strong relationship between citizens' actual agreements with their senators' votes on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and citizens' vote choices for senators.…”

“…Unfortunately, we do not have comparable measures of media coverage and interest group involvement across other issues. Badas and Simas (2022) evaluate a single survey from 2016 and find the issue of Supreme Court nominations ranks about average in importance among voters, compared to other standard issues, such as crime and healthcare. However, we would argue that the generic and abstract assessment of nominations is distinct from the concrete evaluation of a senator's up-or-down vote on a nominee, which is what we focus on in this paper.…”

“…Hutchings (2001) examined the prior question of which type of citizens were more likely to correctly identify the direction of their senators' votes on the Thomas nomination. More recently, Badas and Simas (2022) show that voters who agreed with their senators' votes on the 2017 and 2018 nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, respectively, were more likely to vote in support of their senators.…”