Attack Advertising and the Incumbency Advantage in State Supreme Courts

Abstract

This project evaluates whether televised attack advertising has had detrimental effects on the electoral performance of state supreme court justices. I examine this question by estimating theoretically specified models of incumbent vote shares that include all televised messages by incumbents and challengers and that distinguish between partisan and nonpartisan elections. My specific empirical focus is on 76 supreme court justices seeking reelection in nineteen states from 2002 through 2006. I also rely on CMAG advertising data and campaign finance measures in order to disentangle the effects of campaign spending from television advertising. Overall, I find that attack ads have deleterious effects on the incumbency advantage but only in nonpartisan elections. Interestingly, positive messages favoring incumbents also influence the election returns in both types of elections, ceteris paribus. Finally, factors indicative of discerning choices by voters still have predictive power, even after significant transformations in the electoral context and the rise of attack advertising. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the powerful force of institutional arrangements in shaping electoral politics while raising questions about whether several leading assumptions are overdrawn about the impact of negativity and the new politics of campaigns on the state court bench.

Keywords: state supreme courts, judicial elections, state courts, judicial politics, campaigns and elections