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State Supreme Court Elections

The Significance of Racial Cues

Florida State University

Matthew DeZee

Florida State University

William Eckert

Arthur D. Little, Inc.

The literature on judicial elections in the United States is virtually unanimous in its assessment of voter interest and turnout; most studies show that judicial elections do not provide voters with the sort of salient cues that generate interest and participation in elections for positions on the bench. For this reason, the elections for seats on the Florida Supreme Court in 1976 provide an enlightening context for evaluating the effect of voter cues in low saliency elections. Those elections represented a quiet landmark in American electoral politics inasmuch as it was the first time since Reconstruction that a black had been elected to statewide office in the South. We use this context to evaluate the impact of a black candidate in drawing black voters to participate in an otherwise low-saliency judicial election. Our data, drawn from statewide sampling of Florida election precincts, show that voters in predominantly black precincts participated in substantially higher proportions in the race with a black candidate than they did in other races for the Supreme Court. We also explore the patterns of support for the black candidate in the context of circumstances that encourage or impede participation in low-saliency nonpartisan elections.

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