Individual Contributions to State Supreme Court Campaigns

Abstract

Building upon existing theories of political fundraising and citizen participation in elections, this study examines contributions from individuals as an essential form of political participation in state high court elections from 2000 through 2012. Specifically, I explore the degree to which candidate characteristics, state political environments, and the attributes of state institutions affect the size of individual contributions. The findings of this investigation indicate the participation of contributors in judicial elections closely resembles the activities of voters. Like voters, contributors respond to contextual forces that increase or decrease salience and the political information available to state citizens. Of particular importance are state decisions to use partisan or nonpartisan election designs. Decisions by states to use partisan elections have important consequences for the generosity of contributors with larger donations directed to candidates seeking office in the most professionalized elective state supreme courts.

Keywords

judicial elections judicial politics political participation political behavior electoral systems campaign finance campaigns

In recent years, scholars and reformers have continued to direct attention to the rising costs of judicial election campaigns. With the increasing costs of seeking state supreme court positions, the concerns of judicial election critics have focused on a wide array of issues, including the impact of increasingly expensive contests on public attitudes toward state courts to the relationship between judges and their campaign contributors. Particularly relevant is the participation of individuals as direct contributors to state supreme court campaigns. During the 2011–12 election cycle, the National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMSP) reports individual contributors gave US$20.3 million to state supreme court campaigns. While acrimony continues to surround the practice of electing state judges (O’Connor and McGregor 2011–2012) and donations to judicial campaigns continue to advance to record levels (Sample et al. 2010), no single study has performed a systematic analysis of contributions by individuals to state supreme court campaigns. As such, the objective of this article is to investigate the participation of individuals in state high court campaigns to better understand the incentives for making large or small donations.

Where previous investigations have addressed contributions to state court campaigns, they have explored fundraising through the perspective of the candidate by using campaign-level data (Bonneau 2007). While informative, prior studies address how campaigns respond to stimuli when fundraising, rather than how individuals respond to their political environment. Yet, as a primary form of political participation, it is also important to understand how specific political variables, including electoral environments and political institutions that affect the flow of information, motivate participants to be more or less generous in judicial elections. Fortunately, new and robust sources of data allow the investigation of contributors to be possible. Specifically, the collection of contribution data by the NIMSP, a depository for state contribution data for each of the American states, permits investigators to explore and understand political contributions as an essential aspect of citizen participation. Using the contribution data collected by NIMSP, this research analyzes the predictors of nearly 250,000 campaign contributions in partisan and nonpartisan state supreme court races in 22 states from 2000 to 2012.

This analysis contributes to the study of judicial elections and citizen participation in two ways. First, most recent studies have explored aspects of judicial elections at the aggregate (or campaign) level. While scholars are now turning their attention to the factors that influence individual voters in state court elections (see Bonneau and Cann’s 2015 individual-level study of voter participation and vote choice), sweeping advances have been made using campaign-level data to better understand the determinants of ballot roll-off, votes for incumbents, and campaign spending (see Hall 2007; 2015; Hall and Bonneau 2008; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009). Throughout those studies, the features of candidates, campaigns, and institutional context are reliably consistent in their impact on how voters make decisions in judicial elections and how campaigns allocate their resources. Likewise, studies of campaign fundraising (Bonneau 2007) have investigated elements of judicial elections at the aggregate campaign level. Combined, studies of voter participation and campaign fundraising provide critical examinations of the pressures facing campaigns and the inducements for electoral participation by citizens. This research on individual contributions is designed to complement those prior efforts by exploring many of the same influences on citizen choice and participation at the individual level. With individual-level studies of political behavior, it becomes possible to develop an improved comprehension of citizen involvement in elections, as well as an understanding from this study of how contributions vary among specific races and election contests across states.

Second, studies of political participation have primarily directed their attention to the process of voting. As a manner of participation, voting is the essential form of citizen involvement in a representative government as participation by voters can determine who wins elections and influence the decisions of elected representatives (Engstrom 2012; Hall 2007; 2015; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). In addition to voting, however, democratic participation includes the social discussion of political matters, correspondence to elected leaders, protest, and contributions to political campaigns. This article arises from limited attention to the latter activity—decisions by individuals to contribute larger or smaller sums to political campaigns. Fortunately, contributions to presidential, congressional, and state-level campaigns have received both descriptive (Francia et al. 2003; Sorauf 1992) and systematic consideration (Brown, Powell, and Wilcox 1995; Ensley 2009; La Raja and Schaffner 2015; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993) with the motives of donors tied to their strategic goals and the context of campaigns and elections. This study seeks to reaffirm that the goals that motivate donors to presidential, congressional, and state-level campaigns also influence contributors to state supreme court campaigns.¹

Understanding Contributions as a Form of Participation

Before exploring the theoretical foundation of contributions to state supreme court campaigns, it is important to first understand individual contributions as a form of behavior—in state court campaigns and elsewhere. As the largest source of contributions to political campaigns in state (La Raja and Schaffner 2015) and federal elections (Ensley 2009; Jacobson and Carson 2015), individual contributors share several characteristics that make them unrepresentative of the broader electorate. While only about 10% of the electorate makes contributions (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Sorauf 1992), research finds contributors to congressional and state legislative campaigns are more likely to be older, male, married, white, and affluent than the American electorate (La Raja and Schaffner 2015). With income status, in particular, donors come from much wealthier income categories than the typical voter. Moreover, donors are much more ideological than voters and generally support those candidates who embrace their policy positions, a finding that is consistent across federal and state elections (Ensley 2009; Francia et al. 2003; La Raja and Schaffner 2015).

Although citizens usually donate funds for a variety of reasons, Francia et al. (2003) categorize individual contributors to campaigns into four groups: investors, ideologues, intimates, and incidentals. Investors, which are one-quarter of all individual contributors, are motivated by material incentives and the desire for access to policy makers. In contrast, a third of contributors qualify as ideologues, which are motivated by purposive or ideological goals. As noted, ideologically motivated contributors support candidates that will pursue policy changes that align with a contributor’s ideological goals. Contributors also divide into two remaining groups—intimates and incidentals. Intimates (also about a quarter of contributors) are individuals who donate to candidates based on social reasons, and incidentals (15% of contributors) are donors without strong personal or professional motives for making contributions to political campaigns.

For most donors, decisions to contribute result from a mixture of solidary, purposive, and material incentives (Brown, Powell, and Wilcox 1995; Francia et al. 2003); however, the motives for the two largest groups of contributors, investors and ideologues, are generally distinct. For investors motivated by narrowly defined policy outcomes, donations are contingent on a candidate’s probability of winning (Ensley 2009; Francia et al. 2003). This is one reason that incumbent candidates typically raise more money than nonincumbent candidates (Bonneau 2007; Krasno, Green, and Cowden 1994), as incumbents benefit electorally from the numerous advantages of holding office (Box-Steffensmeier 1996; Jacobson and Carson 2015; Krasno, Green, and Cowden 1994). Alternatively, donors with purposive goals—ideologues—are motivated by the closeness of elections and their ideological proximity to candidates (Ensley 2009; Francia et al. 2003). More than other contributors, ideologues are engaged where elections have clearer partisan or ideological signals and where they can affect the outcome of a close election. While the strategic motivation to donate differs by the type of contributor, decisions of contributors to donate are connected to a number of common features that allow their goals to be better satisfied. While this study does not separately explore the different types of contributors, prominent features of campaigns, elections, and state environments are examined to better understand the size of judicial donations. For the most active judicial contributors, characteristics such as a candidate’s office-holding status, the closeness of elections, and state election designs should relate to a stronger or weaker desire to contribute larger sums to state high court elections.

Campaign Contributions in State Supreme Court Elections

The existing literature on citizen involvement in state judicial elections is an appropriate starting place to understand decisions to contribute money to judicial campaigns. While describing a large body of literature is a difficult task, studies of state judicial elections provide several explanatory pathways. Citizen participation in judicial elections, such as decisions by individuals to vote, is known to be a function of contextual forces (Bonneau and Cann 2015; Hall 2007; Hall and Bonneau 2013; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009) and institutional arrangements (Bonneau and Cann 2015; Hall 2007; 2015; Hall and Bonneau 2008; 2013; Streb and Frederick 2011; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009) that encourage information to be available to state citizens.

Among other attributes, more competitive environments provide strong incentives for citizen participation with higher voter turnout (Bonneau and Cann 2015) and reduced voter roll-off (Hall 2007; Hall and Bonneau 2013; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009) where citizens believe their choice is pivotal to the outcome of an election. Furthermore, formal institutional structures serve an important role in allowing election information to be channeled to citizens. Election laws that allow partisan information on ballots encourage a more active electorate (Bonneau and Cann 2015; Hall 2007; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009). Where elections are salient and information more easily received by voters, participation in state judicial elections increases. Following that basic premise of electoral participation, this study explores the contextual and institutional factors that shape citizen involvement in the area of contribution-making.

Research Design

While studies of state supreme courts once suffered from limited access to systematic data, an increasing body of comprehensive data is now available to explore questions about the outcomes of state supreme court decisions (e.g., Brace and M. G. Hall’s State Supreme Court Data Archive and M. E. K. Hall and Windett’s New Data on State Supreme Courts), as well as attributes of campaign finance (e.g., the NIMSP’s Follow the Money archive of state contributions). In relation to systematic state-level contribution data, this project follows Bonica and Woodruff’s (2015; Bonica 2014) inventive use of contribution data to explore features of state supreme courts. Through campaign finance records, they developed ideal points for incumbent and challenger candidates, as well as judicial ideal points in the common ideological space. In addition, contribution data from the NIMSP have been used to investigate questions regarding the connections between campaign finance laws and the behavior of donors (La Raja and Schaffner 2015), self-financed campaigns and electoral results in gubernatorial elections (Brown 2013), and policy issues and group mobilization in direct democracy elections (Damore and Nicholson 2014). This research follows the example of those studies by utilizing campaign finance records to explore the incentives for individuals to contribute larger or smaller sums in state supreme court elections.

To systematically explore the generosity of contributors as a form of participation, data were gathered from the NIMSP’s Follow the Money data archive (http://www.followthemoney.org) for all elections (including both contested and noncontested elections) from 2000 through 2012. The year 2000 represents the first year for which the NIMSP systematically collected campaign contribution data for the 22 states with partisan or nonpartisan judicial elections. To make the estimates comparable over time, contributions were adjusted to constant dollars (2012) using the Consumer Price Index, which is customary in the literature where multiple years are evaluated (see Engstrom and Ewell 2010). The dependent variable (Contribution) is the natural log of the total amount contributed by an individual to a specific state supreme court election campaign, and contributions were transformed using the natural log to better achieve a normal distribution, which was otherwise not present with nontransformed values. As a result of the level of analysis (contributor-campaign), contributors are found throughout the data donating to different campaigns, but only the total sum of donations for a contributor is included for an election campaign.² I expect the factors described in the section that follows and defined in Table 1 will influence decisions by individuals on the amount in which they donate.

Table 1.

Variable Descriptions for the Models of Contributions in State Supreme Court Elections.

Variable		Variable description
Dependent variable
Contribution	=	0–11.51, natural log of total contributions from individual to judicial campaign
Election-specific context
Incumbent	=	1 if the candidate is an incumbent; 0 otherwise
Chief Justice Incumbent	=	1 if the candidate serves as the chief justice; 0 otherwise
Quality Candidate	=	1 if a nonincumbent candidate holds, or has previously held, a judgeship; 0 otherwise
Female	=	1 if the candidate is female; 0 otherwise
Competitive Race	=	1 if the seat was won by 60% or less of the vote; 0 otherwise
State context
Competitive Court	=	1 if a supreme court race in the previous election cycle was won by 60% or less of the vote; 0 otherwise
Odd Year	=	1 if the election was held in an odd year; 0 otherwise
Institutional context
Partisan Election	=	1 if the election was a partisan election; 0 otherwise
District Election	=	1 if the election occurred in a district-based constituency; 0 otherwise
Professionalization	=	.253–.878, Squire’s index of state supreme court professionalization
Number of Seats	=	1–5, number of state supreme court seats open for election
Multimember Election	=	1 if multiple seats are affected by the outcome of an election; 0 otherwise
Contribution Limit	=	6.21–13.25, natural log of maximum contribution for individuals
Attributes of contributors
Attorney	=	1 if the contributor is an attorney; 0 otherwise
Temporal effects
Election Trend	=	1–13, value associated with the year of election

Descriptive Patterns

To understand contemporary trends, Table 2 displays the central tendencies for the amount contributed by individuals to state supreme court campaigns from 2000 through 2012. First, the average contribution for all states during the period of this study was US$440 and the median donation was US$158. However, Table 2 reports that there are marked differences by state. With dissimilar political environments, states and their judicial campaigns vary from settings with active and generous contributors to those with less engaged citizens.

Table 2.

Average Contribution in State Supreme Court Elections (2012 Dollars), 2000–12.

State	Election type	M	Median	Maximum	SD	N
Wisconsin	Nonpartisan	US$157	US$55	US$11,709	US$544	23,716
Montana^a	Nonpartisan	US$169	US$128	US$1,333	US$113	15,151
Washington	Nonpartisan	US$214	US$108	US$14,187	US$420	13,091
North Carolina^b	Partisan to nonpartisan	US$291	US$142	US$59,985	US$622	14,415
Idaho	Nonpartisan	US$311	US$133	US$6,665	US$658	1,313
Michigan	Nonpartisan	US$350	US$128	US$15,513	US$700	39,250
Ohio	Nonpartisan	US$354	US$132	US$60,750	US$678	49,862
Arkansas^c	Partisan to nonpartisan	US$377	US$171	US$4,556	US$497	6,267
New Mexico	Partisan	US$479	US$128	US$30,375	US$1,503	989
Kentucky	Nonpartisan	US$496	US$285	US$4,264	US$478	6,260
Oregon	Nonpartisan	US$512	US$200	US$85,425	US$2,633	2,661
Minnesota	Nonpartisan	US$521	US$304	US$10,713	US$770	1,286
Alabama	Partisan	US$559	US$213	US$73,710	US$1,932	15,714
Georgia	Nonpartisan	US$610	US$285	US$12,150	US$953	6,160
West Virginia	Partisan	US$623	US$314	US$3,645	US$645	8,253
Texas	Partisan	US$741	US$267	US$21,165	US$1,412	15,469
North Dakota	Nonpartisan	US$798	US$600	US$3,333	US$716	22
Pennsylvania^d	Partisan	US$801	US$277	US$99,720	US$2,653	9,821
Louisiana	Partisan	US$812	US$324	US$15,990	US$1,344	3,656
Nevada	Nonpartisan	US$1,054	US$450	US$12,760	US$1,929	2,636
Illinois^d	Partisan	US$1,128	US$500	US$76,560	US$2,824	4,470
Mississippi	Nonpartisan	US$1,235	US$608	US$21,100	US$1,654	6,191
All states	All elections	US$440	US$158	US$99,720	US$1,165	246,653

Montana uses nonpartisan elections for contested races and retention elections when an incumbent is unopposed.

North Carolina changed from partisan elections to nonpartisan elections in 2004.

Arkansas changed from partisan elections to nonpartisan elections in 2002.

Pennsylvania and Illinois use partisan elections for initial selection, but retention elections thereafter.

More specifically, the average contribution ranged from US$157 in Wisconsin to US$1,235 in Mississippi. The differences observed between states reflect the extent that citizens can be motivated to give larger sums of money to judicial campaigns. Similarly, the median observation tells an interesting story with typical donations varying widely by state. In Wisconsin, the median contribution to a judicial campaign was US$55, while individuals in Mississippi gave much larger median donations of US$608. Together, both the mean and median statistics demonstrate identifiable differences throughout the states with the possibility that contribution giving may be affected by the attributes of each state’s unique political setting. Moreover, in Michigan and Ohio, the two states with mixed election designs, we see similar mean (US$350 and US$354, respectively) and median contribution values (US$350 and US$354, respectively).³

Institutional arrangements are commonly tied to the outcomes of judicial elections. In particular, the rules by which states organize judicial elections are well acknowledged to shape not only the decisions of judges (Brace and Boyea 2008; Brace and Hall 1997) but also political competition in judicial elections (Hall 2001), the success of judicial incumbents (Bonneau 2005a), patterns of spending in judicial races (Bonneau 2005b; Frederick and Streb 2008), and the capacity of judicial campaigns to fundraise (Bonneau 2007). From that research, we should expect that election designs would affect the amount that contributors give to judicial candidates. Table 3 presents patterns of contributions by whether judicial elections are partisan or nonpartisan.⁴ One can see in columns 2 and 3 that contribution amounts in states using partisan elections continued to increase throughout much of the 13-year period.⁵ While partisan judicial campaigns raised an average of US$581 per contributor in 2000, by 2008 the mean value per contributor routinely exceeded US$851, but slightly declined thereafter. By contrast, there is no obvious pattern for contributions in nonpartisan races with the average donation varying greatly by year. In addition, partisan races routinely outraised nonpartisan contests.

Table 3.

Average Contributions by Type of Election Format and Candidate Status (2012 Dollars), All Even Year Races, 2000–12.

Year	Partisan	Nonpartisan	Incumbent	Nonincumbent
2000	US$581	US$403	US$388	US$536
2002	US$596	US$389	US$400	US$496
2004	US$712	US$367	US$477	US$411
2006	US$739	US$382	US$482	US$457
2008	US$851	US$321	US$379	US$599
2010	US$749	US$263	US$394	US$257
2012	US$621	US$319	US$441	US$381
All elections	US$677	US$355	US$420	US$459

Research on election outcomes also comments on the role of electoral context and the role of candidate status (i.e., incumbent vs. challenger; Bonneau and Hall 2009; Jacobson and Carson 2015). Research confirms that both voters (Bonneau 2005a; Hall 2007; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009) and contributors (Bonneau 2007) respond to candidate signals. Columns 4 and 5 of Table 3 establish that contributions received by incumbent candidates generally increased throughout the years of the study. Nonincumbent candidates, however, outperformed incumbents during several years of the analysis. The descriptive statistics presented in Table 3 speak to a differently involved group of contributors by election format, yet the distinction between incumbents and nonincumbents is much less consistent.

Understanding Contributions to Judicial Campaigns

Election-Specific Context

Research across the discipline of political science demonstrates that specific attributes of elections affect citizens’ decisions to participate. As contributors are expected to pursue an investment strategy when making decisions about donations to candidates, the following considers the financial advantages and disadvantages of office-holding status, candidate experience, the gender of candidates, and the closeness of elections. With incumbency, it is well documented that officeholders possess a wealth of structural advantages over those seeking office (Hall 2001), including the benefits of name recognition (Jacobson and Carson 2015) and electoral security that comes from holding office from term to term (Box-Steffensmeier 1996; Krasno, Green, and Cowden 1994). Due to the advantages of holding office, donors of all types are more likely to support incumbents than nonofficeholders (Ensley 2009; Francia et al. 2003). Given those reasons, I hypothesize that individuals will give larger donations to incumbents, rather than nonincumbents, all else being equal (Incumbent).⁶ It should be noted, however, that Bonneau and Cann (2015), in their study of voters’ support for incumbents, find no clear evidence that voters prefer judicial incumbents—regardless of election format. In this study, incumbents are coded 1 where a candidate is an incumbent justice and 0 where candidates are running against an incumbent or for an open seat.⁷

Another race-specific feature that should affect participation among contributors is a race involving the chief justice of a state supreme court. Generally, seats held by chief justices should be considered more important than seats held by associate justices given the enhanced policy-making role of many state chief justice positions (Hall 2007; Hughes, Wilhelm, and Vining 2015). With the authority connected to service as a state’s chief justice, I expect donors will pursue investment strategies that will lead to larger contributions for justices holding the chief justice position (Chief Justice Incumbent). To measure the effect of being a chief justice on donation amounts, individuals serving as a chief justice are coded 1, and 0 otherwise.

In addition to incumbency and chief justice status, the professional experience of candidates is another indication of candidate quality. With prior professional experience, candidates for judicial and legislative office offer signals to investors that they will perform well in elections and later once in office (Bonneau and Hall 2009; Van Dunk 1997). Furthermore, candidates with professional experience generally raise significant sums of campaign money (Krasno, Green, and Cowden 1994; Maestas and Rugeley 2008), suggesting candidates with professional experience are a positive investment for investors. I hypothesize that contributors will donate larger sums of money to candidates with lower court experience as a trial or appellate court judge (Quality Candidate). To measure candidate quality, information was obtained using newspaper reports and candidate biographies from campaign websites.⁸ Candidates with lower court judicial experience are coded 1, and candidates without lower court experience are coded 0.

From studies of Congress to those focused on state courts, research has sought to understand the difficulties that female candidates might face when fundraising (Burrell 2014; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009). Empirical studies of gender effects, however, have been inconsistent in reporting a linkage between female candidates and their success with fundraising (Gaddie and Bullock 1995). While early studies found women experienced a disadvantage among contributors (Mandel 1981), more recent findings demonstrate women have closed the gap and now perform quite well among contributors (Biersack and Herrnson 1994; Burrell 2014). In her study of fundraising among female congressional candidates, Burrell (2014) finds male and female candidates running for Congress were equally skillful at raising money; however, when looking at different types of donors (i.e., large vs. small), female candidates outraised male candidates among all levels of contributions.⁹ With recent evidence showing fewer disadvantages than once observed for female candidates, I anticipate that the incentives for larger contributions will be roughly the same for male and female candidates (Female).

In addition to candidate attributes, characteristics of elections, such as closely contested races, are shown to affect citizen involvement in elections. Following the example of Hall (2007; Hall and Bonneau 2013), I include a dummy variable for races won by 60% of the vote or less, which is the standard threshold used to identify marginal elections in studies of legislative (Weber, Tucker, and Brace 1991) and state supreme court elections (Bonneau and Hall 2009; Hall 2007). For both incumbents and challengers, close elections raise awareness among all types of contributors leading to larger donations (Ensley 2009; Francia et al. 2003). In state supreme court elections, I anticipate that contributions will increase where races are competitive (Competitive Race).¹⁰

State Context

As with any study of citizen participation in elections, the broader state political environment should receive consideration. Beyond whether a race is competitive, the general environment may establish trends in electoral competition that affect the size of contributions. Hall’s (2001; 2007) studies demonstrate state court elections vary considerably in their degree of electoral competition, which she finds lowers ballot roll-off. More competitive environments, likewise, are expected to increase participation among contributors leading to larger contributions. To that end, I include a dummy variable (Competitive Court) coded 1 for states where an election was won by 60% or less in the previous election cycle, and 0 otherwise.

In both even and odd years, there are state supreme court races. Empirical research, however, notes a decline in voter turnout (Dubois 1980) and increased roll-off (Dubois 1980; Hall 2007) where judicial elections do not coincide with presidential elections. Consistent with expectations of decreased participation where fewer salient elections are on the ballot, I expect that contributors will be less generous in odd year elections that do not coincide with either a presidential or midterm election (Odd Year).

Institutional Context

Studies of state supreme court elections demonstrate the critical importance of institutional arrangements for understanding citizen involvement. Increased participation is found in state judicial races where states use partisan elections, rather than nonpartisan and retention election formats (Hall 2007; Hall and Bonneau 2008; Streb, Frederick, and LaFrance 2009).¹¹ Moreover, research demonstrates that contributors use partisan information when selectively choosing which candidates to support with value placed on partisan agreement (Francia et al. 2003; Grant and Rudolph 2002). I anticipate that donors will be positively affected by increased partisan information. For contributors participating in judicial elections, they are expected to give larger sums in states using partisan election designs, but less money where nonpartisan elections are used (Partisan Election). Elections are coded 1 where states use partisan election designs and 0 where nonpartisan elections are used.

Another frequently explored characteristic of judicial elections is the design of elections relating to district versus at-large formats. While the majority of states use at-large designs for their state supreme court elections, several states tie judges to more localized constituencies. Although contributors differ from voters as they may participate in elections beyond their voting district, I expect contributors in states with district elections will be more knowledgeable about judicial candidates due to the smaller constituency size. As a result, district elections are hypothesized to encourage larger contributions than at-large elections (District Election). Elections are coded 1 where justices are elected by the voters of a district and 0 where judges are elected by a state’s electorate.

Like state legislatures (Squire 2012), many state supreme courts were professionalized throughout the latter half of the twentieth century (Squire 2008). Today, many state supreme courts, such as the high courts of California and Pennsylvania, pay their judges well, have large staffs, and control their workload. Yet, other states, like North Dakota, have been slower to increase the resources of their state supreme court. With professionalization, the incentives for service are stronger (Boyea 2011), and courts play a more active role in state policy formulation (Brace and Hall 2001). Moreover, Hall (2015) provides compelling evidence that state supreme court professionalization shapes the decisions of voters. Professionalization not only improves incumbent vote shares but also increases ballot roll-off, suggesting reduced civic interest where courts have more resources. Responding to the enhanced authority of professionalized state supreme courts and reduced civic engagement in elections affecting those courts, I include Squire’s (2008) docket scored measure of professionalization to explore the effects of state court resources on citizen contributions.¹² In general, contributors are hypothesized to direct smaller donations to campaigns for seats in more professionalized courts (Professionalization).

The number of judicial seats open for election may also affect the size of contributions. When elections include more than one judicial race, individuals may be restricted from giving their preferred amounts due to finite resources. I expect contributions to be smaller where several seats are separately chosen in a given year (Number of Seats). The number of seats variable is operationalized using a measure that ranges from 1 to 5.¹³ Similarly, a handful of states group candidates into multimember elections where the first and second place finishers win the first and second seats, respectively. I hypothesize that elections which determine officeholders simultaneously will encourage more widespread attention from contributors leading to larger donations than single-member elections (Multimember Election). Elections are coded 1 if multiple seats are affected by the outcome of an election and 0 if an election is a conventional one-seat race.¹⁴

In addition, most states with elective courts have adopted campaign contribution limits. Contribution laws affecting individual donations, however, varied widely throughout the years of this study with calendar year limits on donations as low as US$500 in Minnesota and as high as US$23,000 in Ohio.¹⁵ In six states, including Pennsylvania and Texas, contributors have no limit on the size of their donations. With research showing that individuals give smaller donations to candidates where states restrict contributions (La Raja and Schaffner 2015), I anticipate that state contribution limits will reduce the overall size of individual contributions (Contribution Limit). To estimate how contribution laws influence the contributions of individuals, information about state contribution limits was gathered from the National Center of State Legislatures.¹⁶ The value of the contribution limit variable is measured using the largest permitted individual contribution for a state in a given year. Where states allow unlimited individual contributions, the value is equal to the largest observed contribution for that state and year.

Attributes of Contributors

Finally, contributors themselves may possess attributes that encourage or discourage participation in judicial campaigns. Fortunately, information about the profession of contributors is available from the NIMSP. From various studies of contribution effects (Cann 2007; Sample et al. 2010), we know attorneys are keenly interested in the results of judicial campaigns as judicial turnover could mean a shift toward a more friendly or oppositional environment. Attorneys then, following the logic of Gimpel, Lee, and Kaminski (2006), likely form local and state networks that encourage more generous contributions than those active in other professions (Attorney).¹⁷ The variable for attorney is coded 1 where a contributor is employed as an attorney and 0 where employed in an alternative area.

Conditional Assumptions

This study places significant importance on the impact of election design. In addition to the direct impact on contribution amount for several institutional attributes, I expect that the inclusion (or exclusion) of formal partisan cues during political campaigns will conditionally affect the behavior of contributors. The conditional relationship explored in this study is the link between contribution amounts and the resources of state supreme courts where states use partisan or nonpartisan election designs. With professionalization varying dramatically throughout the states, I anticipate that more professionalized state courts staffed by partisan elections will increase the salience of election campaigns. Contributors are expected to respond to the increased stakes of elections in states with very professionalized high courts and partisan judicial elections by contributing greater sums of money. Alternatively, where states utilize nonpartisan judicial elections and restrict partisan information, a weaker connection between professionalization and contribution sums is expected. To evaluate the conditional impact of professionalization, a multiplicative term for partisan election and Squire’s measure of state supreme court professionalization is added to the second regression model (Partisan Election × Professionalization).

Temporal Effects

Finally, this study includes a trend variable that controls for the possibility that contributors gave increasing or decreasing sums of money from 2000 through 2012 (Election Trend). Alternatively, dummy variables for specific election cycles were tested, but the results were not substantively different.

Estimation Technique

With the continuous nature of the dependent variable (Contribution), ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used to estimate Models 1 and 2. Furthermore, due to the structure of data, I use robust clustered standard errors (RCSEs) grouped by elections, which are robust to expectations about within-group correlation. The individual-level data are clustered by election because it is likely that contributor observations are correlated within elections, but independent from observations from alternative elections.¹⁸

Results

In specifying the models of contributions, I use a two-step process in Table 4. First, I estimate a baseline model that includes each of the variables of interest without interaction effects (Model 1). Second, I estimate the effects of the explanatory variables from the first model, in addition to an interaction variable, to test the validity of the conditional assumption for professionalization where states differ by electoral design (Model 2). Comparing the performance of the first and second models, it becomes evident that while specific features of candidates and institutions are stable across models, a more complete understanding of contributions is possible only when taking into account the varying effects of electoral designs. The second model reveals how election formats and the resources of courts jointly affect the financial involvement of contributors. Due to the quantity of observations, however, it is also important to consider whether the results of Models 1 and 2 suffer from Type I error, which results from rejecting an agreed upon null hypothesis that is actually true (a false positive). To explore that possibility, I utilize the bootstrapping method of statistical inference in the appendix to reevaluate Models 1 and 2; however, estimating bootstrap clustered standard errors (BCSEs) does not substantively alter the findings.

Table 4.

Ordinary Least Squares Estimation of Contributions by Individuals with RCSE, 2000–12.

Explanatory variables	Model 1	Model 2	Expectation
Explanatory variables	Coefficient	Coefficient	Expectation
Election context
Incumbent	0.009 (.078)	0.070 (.074)	β > 0
Chief Justice Incumbent	0.272** (.137)	0.320** (.144)	β > 0
Quality Candidate	0.122 (.096)	0.145* (.084)	β > 0
Female	0.092 (.065)	0.088 (.064)	N.E.
Competitive Race	−0.084 (.083)	−0.009 (.076)	β > 0
State context
Competitive Court	0.013 (.078)	0.005 (.072)	β > 0
Odd Year	−0.619** (.273)	−0.796*** (.273)	β < 0
Institutional context
Partisan Election	0.465*** (.097)	−1.487*** (.420)	β > 0
District Election	0.938*** (.082)	0.859*** (.076)	β > 0
Professionalization	−0.121 (.310)	−0.755*** (.278)	β < 0
Number of Seats	−0.015 (.036)	0.002 (.035)	β < 0
Multimember Election	0.308** (.128)	0.265** (.110)	β > 0
Contribution Limit	0.077*** (.023)	0.078*** (.019)	β > 0
Contributor context
Attorney	0.678*** (.041)	0.642*** (.040)	β > 0
Interaction term
Partisan Election × Professionalization	—	2.979*** (.671)	β > 0
Temporal context
Election Trend	−0.021* (.011)	−0.021** (.010)	N.E.
Constant	4.305*** (.305)	4.606*** (.271)	—
Number of clusters (elections)	249	249
Number of observations	244,400	244,400
F-test	48.60***	55.13***
p > F	.000	.000
R ²	.189	.203
Root MSE	1.168	1.158

Note. Statistics reported are ordinary least squares regression with robust standard errors clustered on election in parentheses. RCSE = robust clustered standard error; N.E. = no expectation; MSE = mean square error.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01 (two-tailed test of significance).

Immediately apparent from Table 4 is the strong performance of both models. The basic features of campaigns, state context, and institutional designs explain approximately 19% to 20% of the variation in contributions. Furthermore, these results are consistent with findings from previous campaign-level studies of contributions, as well as the theoretical expectations of this study.

Consider first the findings reported in Model 1 of Table 4. The results from the first model clearly indicate that individual contributions increase with a candidate’s service as a chief justice, even year elections, partisan election designs, district and multimember elections, larger or no campaign contribution limits, and a contributor’s employment as an attorney. Otherwise, the estimates for incumbency status, candidates with lower court experience, gender, competitive races, competitive electoral environments, state supreme court professionalization, and the number of seats have no discernible relationship with contribution amounts. Considering the trend variable from Model 1, the coefficient is negative and marginally significant, suggesting that contributors were not more generous as years advanced throughout this study.

With the substantive impact of the election-specific and state context variables considered first, elections affecting the position of chief justice both substantively and positively encouraged larger donations from contributors. Where state supreme court campaigns affected the sitting chief justice, contributors gave 31.2% larger donations than those featuring an associate justice or nonincumbent candidate. Odd year elections also affected contribution amounts with donations reduced by 46.1% in years not coinciding with presidential or midterm elections.

Interestingly, the variable most tied to the debate over citizen participation—partisan elections—had a statistically significant and substantively strong impact. Throughout states with judicial elections, contributors gave 59.2% larger donations in partisan election systems compared with those giving to nonpartisan election campaigns. States with district elections increased contributions by 155.4% compared with elections for statewide judicial office. Where multimember elections were used, contributors donated 36.1% larger donations than to conventional single-member elections. Alternatively, and as hypothesized, state contribution laws that permitted larger donations to judicial campaigns encouraged generosity among contributors. A 10% increase in the amount that could be donated to judicial campaigns increased contributions by a modest 0.7%; however, a 100% increase in a state’s contribution limit increased donations by 5.5%.¹⁹ Finally, attorneys gave 96.9% larger donations than nonattorneys, a finding that supports the contention that attorneys are active participants in state supreme court elections.

The findings reported in Model 2 add an important consideration to the understanding of contributor activity by adding an interaction term for the conditional effect of partisan election systems and state supreme court professionalization. Importantly, the addition of Partisan Election × Professionalization to Model 2 does not statistically diminish any of the substantively important nonconstituent variables; however, the estimates for candidates with lower court experience and the election trend have a more pronounced relationship with contribution amounts than the results reported in Model 1. More notably, the conditional effect of professionalization where states use partisan or nonpartisan elections adds an important dimension for understanding how contributors respond to political information. Contributions to candidates with recent experience as chief justice were 37.8% larger than nonchief justices. While just marginally related to contributions, candidates with lower court experience received donations that were 15.6% larger than those without judicial experience. States that time their elections to occur in odd numbered years had contributions that were 54.9% smaller than even numbered years. With the institutional context of elections, district elections coincided with individual contributions that were 136% larger than those directed to statewide campaigns. Where states use multimember elections, contributors donated 30.4% larger donations than to single-member districts. With campaign contribution limits, the marginal effect is nearly identical to the result from Model 1. Last among the statistically important noninteraction variables, attorneys gave 90% larger contributions than nonattorneys, all things being equal.

Of greatest significance, the multiplicative variable (Partisan Election × Professionalization) used in Model 2 tests the conditional relationship between state supreme court professionalization and contributions where states do or do not use partisan elections. While the estimate for Professionalization is not statistically meaningful in Model 1, the coefficient for Partisan Election × Professionalization in Model 2 is positive and statistically significant.²⁰ Recognizing that interactions between binary and continuous variables can be difficult to interpret, Figure 1 displays the marginal effect of the coefficient for Partisan Election × Professionalization.²¹ Figure 1 shows the linear prediction of the natural log value for contribution size where professionalization ranges from the minimum to the maximum value for both nonpartisan and partisan election states. The plot demonstrates contributions in nonpartisan election systems decreased from 5.39 (US$219.04 in real value) to 4.86 (US$129.10) where professionalization increased, a reduction of 41.1%. In partisan election systems, however, the effect of professionalization is strongly positive. The linear prediction of contribution amount for the least professionalized elective court was 4.50 (US$89.85 in real value) compared with 6.05 (US$426.02) for the most professionalized elective court, an increase of 374.2%. Thus, the effect of professionalization differs greatly in states with nonpartisan or partisan judicial elections. For partisan election states, the stakes of elections lead contributors to give much larger amounts of money where state supreme courts are more professionalized.

Figure 1.

The conditional effect of professionalization on contributions.

Conclusion

How receptive are individual contributors to signals created by judicial campaigns and elections? The findings suggest contributors are highly attentive although judicial elections are generally less salient than races for executive, congressional, and many state-level offices. Most central to the findings of this study, however, is the important role that institutional design plays in raising levels of information that result in larger donations. Of the variables explored in this analysis, the formal election system is observed to be a central mechanism by which to tie campaigns to donors. The results suggest that contributors respond very differently to candidates seeking positions in professionalized courts according to whether the laws of a state allow explicit partisan information about candidates. Unlike contributions in states with nonpartisan systems, increased office status and authority to dictate the judicial agenda lead to larger contributions where states allow explicit partisan signals in elections.

The results of this investigation lead to an extension of existing theory concerning citizen participation. While prior studies used aggregate campaign-level data to suggest contributors process information effectively in down-ballot judicial campaigns, the findings of this study provide complementary evidence that judicial contributors are knowledgeable citizens who make decisions differently not only by the context of elections but also by the variation within races. For those willing to give money or invest in campaigns, the features of candidates, political environments, and institutional design strongly influence decisions about how much to donate. The results demonstrate that donors are responsive to races involving a chief justice, as well as elections timed to coincide with more salient midterm or presidential election years. Moreover, where states use district designs, operate multimember elections, permit larger contributions, and feature professionalized courts in partisan election environments, donors increase the size of their contribution. As for professionalization, the results correspond well with Hall’s (2015) finding that professionalization decreases citizen participation in elections. For candidates seeking seats on professionalized courts in states with nonpartisan elections, the results demonstrate candidates receive smaller donations due perhaps to reduced engagement among citizens in those states. However, where partisan elections structure outcomes in states with professionalized courts, contributors remain very involved by giving larger gifts.

The second objective of this study was to further our understanding of contributors. Where contributors are given the opportunity to support a state’s chief justice, where partisan information is readily available, and where elections have district designs, donors are increasingly charitable. As such, individuals who contribute money to state supreme court campaigns align well with the observations of Rosenstone and Hansen (1993) and Francia et al. (2003). Where citizens believe more is at stake with an election, either personally due to their motives for participation or politically due to the character and quality of office, the incentives to fund campaigns for all contributors become sufficiently compelling to encourage larger donations. As such, both voters and contributors can be understood as groups of citizens that respond to signals emerging from the electoral environment. For voters, improved competition and institutions that channel political information to voters improve turnout and participation in down-ballot judicial elections. For contributors, a similar pattern emerges with more generous contributions where the stakes of elections are more significant. For donors willing to participate, activity in judicial elections is a response to improved understanding of those candidates seeking to remain in office and the features of office that increase or decrease a court’s policy-making role.

Last, it is quite informative that a small group of variables consistently determines much about the performance of state supreme court elections. Studies that explore the electoral safety of incumbent judges, the incentives for voter participation, and the level of generosity among individual contributors in judicial elections have found those patterns largely correlate with electoral conditions that strengthen election salience and institutional attributes that encourage or discourage attention among state citizens and improve the quality of office. For the politics of institutional design, the results of this investigation and prior studies demonstrate that professionalization and the rules of the political system, such as election formats that allow political party activity or localized constituencies, have distinct and consistent effects on the performance of judicial elections.

Footnotes

Appendix

In Table 4, the empirical models of contributions were estimated using robust clustered standard errors (RCSEs). The sample size, however, is problematic due to the large number of observations (244,400 observations), which could lead to Type I error where an agreed upon null hypothesis is rejected though actually true. While many of the factors affecting the generosity of contributors are considered, it is suggested by the r² goodness-of-fit measure that a myriad of factors not controlled in the empirical models affect the decisions of contributors. Related, Harden (2011) suggests that RCSE, like those used in this analysis, may be biased downward, which increases the likelihood of Type I error. While Harden suggests scholars should not avoid clustered data, he recommends bootstrap clustered standard errors (BCSEs) because they outperform RCSE and produce estimates that are less likely to be biased downward. To test the robustness of the empirical results, Table A1 utilizes the bootstrapping procedure, which derives characteristics of the sampling distribution of estimators from 1,000 replications, to evaluate the robustness of the results for dollars contributed by individuals with the observational units again clustered by election. The results reported in Table A1 indicate that there are no differences between the RCSE and BCSE specifications except for the multimember election variable, which has a marginally significant effect on individual contributions in the conditional effect regression with BCSE. Given the estimation of BCSE, there is confidence relating to the performance of the estimates in the models of contributions.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Paul Brace, Michael Nelson, Joseph Ross, Benjamin Soltoff, and four anonymous reviewers for providing a number of helpful comments. He would also like to thank Chris Bonneau and the National Institute on Money in State Politics for sharing their data.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Brent D. Boyea is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research examines how political and judicial institutions affect political behavior across the American states.

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