<i>Bush v. Gore</i> in the American Mind: Reflections and Survey Results on the Tenth Anniversary of the Decision Ending the 2000 Election Controversy

Abstract

In the decade since the Supreme Court’s decision, no survey has been conducted that asks about Bush v. Gore or tries to link attitudes toward the decision to opinion of the Court. This paper discusses the first survey taken on this subject in the last ten years since the initial fallout from the decision. In the first part, we describe the earlier literature on attitudes toward the Court and attitudes toward the decision ending the 2000 recount. Next, we look at results from our recent survey that asked respondents whether they thought the Court’s decision was fair or unfair. Although a sizable share (almost 30 percent) of the population said they did not remember the decision, we found that the public remains polarized along partisan and racial lines in its attitudes toward the decision and that approval of the Bush presidency remains a powerful predictor of attitudes toward the decision. The last section briefly examines the effect of perceived fairness of the decision in Bush v. Gore on a respondent’s approval and confidence in the Supreme Court. Although approval or confidence in other institutions, such as Congress and the President, greatly determines attitudes toward the Court, attitudes concerning the decision in Bush v. Gore remain a statistically significant variable in predicting Court approval and confidence.