Campaign Endorsements and Election Outcomes in Judicial Elections

Increasing voter knowledge in low-information elections is paramount to democratic accountability. Endorsements serve as a source of information about candidates for voters. Though candidates in state supreme court races are constrained by many traditional methods of electioneering, endorsements of judicial candidates remain relatively unconstrained. Using an original dataset of campaign advertisements from 2000-2018, we coded for a variety of public endorsements that were included in television ads of candidates for state courts of last resort (SCOLR). We find support that group endorsements have an electoral impact in these races, while other types of endorsements do not appear to have any discernable effect. We further find that group endorsements help challengers but hurt incumbents. Our findings suggest that endorsements from various advocacy groups can impact outcomes for low-information election types where voters typically have little to no prior understanding of a judicial candidate’s legal or policy positions, but their effectiveness is dependent on incumbency status of the candidates.