The Need for More Individual-Level Judicial Election Data

Abstract

After the 2000 election cycle, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics issued a report on that year’s state supreme court elections. According to the report, a “new politics of judicial elections” had materialized in which judicial elections were getting more competitive, negative, and costly (Goldberg, Holman, and Sanchez, 2002). Around the same time, a new wave of judicial elections research emerged beginning largely with the work of Hall (2001). Although scholars had studied judicial elections for decades (e.g., Dubois, 1980), in many ways this new research was more methodologically advanced and employed more systematic data sets. In Hall’s (2001) integral article, she examined contestation and competition in judicial elections using an impressive set of data from 1980 to 1995.1 Her findings challenged the conventional wisdom that judicial elections are usually uncompetitive. From there, Hall, both by herself and with Bonneau (e.g., Hall, 2001, 2007a; Hall and Bonneau, 2006, 2008; Bonneau and Hall, 2003), examined numerous questions relating to such issues as challenger emergence and political participation in judicial elections. Bonneau (2004; 2005a, b; 2007a, b) also conducted extensive research on campaign spending in judicial races. These studies added a tremendous amount to our understanding of judicial elections at the supreme court level. More recently, Streb and Frederick (e.g., Streb and Frederick, 2009; Frederick and Streb, 2008; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance, 2009), have replicated several of the works of Hall and Bonneau at the intermediate appellate court (IAC) level to get a better understanding of the ways in which the two appellate court levels’ elections are similar or different. One shortcoming of all of these analyses, however, is that both Hall and Bonneau and Streb and Frederick had to rely on aggregate-level election results to analyze the dynamics of judicial elections. Although these aggregate-level data sets were comprehensive, the lack of systematic individual-level data raises as many questions about judicial elections as the aforementioned studies answered. There is simply much we cannot glean by relying on aggregate election returns alone. Just as studies of other elections, such as those for president or Congress, have been enriched by aggregate and individual-level data, the judicial elections subfield would benefit greatly from more complete individual-level data sets, both of voters and candidates. This is not to imply that no work on judicial elections has used individual-level data or that the studies that have employed individual-level data have some-