Abstract
Does public opinion influence Supreme Court confirmation politics? We present the first direct evidence that state-level public opinion on whether a particular Supreme Court nominee should be confirmed affects the roll-call votes of senators. Using national polls and applying recent advances in opinion estimation, we produce state-of-the-art estimates of public support for the confirmation of 10 recent Supreme Court nominees in all 50 states. We find that greater home-state public support does significantly and strikingly increase the probability that a senator will vote to approve a nominee, even controlling for other predictors of roll-call voting. These results establish a systematic and powerful link between constituency opinion and voting on Supreme Court nominees. We connect this finding to larger debates on the role of majoritarianism and representation.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 767-784 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of Politics |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2010 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science