Judicial Norms and Campaigns: The Content of Televised Advertisements in State Supreme Court Races

Abstract

ABSTRACTAds aired in judicial campaigns have traditionally been quite tame—largely positive and focused on candidate traits such as experience. Judicial norms against attacking opponents and against position taking help to explain this fact, but sometimes these norms are violated. In this research, we ask whether the factors that drive negativity and policy discussion are the same across judicial and other races. Using data compiled by the Wisconsin Advertising Project and the Wesleyan Media Project, we conduct a content analysis of state supreme court ads aired on television from 2006–2013 and compare these ads to those aired in gubernatorial and congressional campaigns. We find that the predictors of negativity and policy talk are similar, but judicial ads remain more positive and less policy-focused than non-judicial ads, a finding that supports the judicial norms explanation.