Diffuse Support, Partisanship, and the Electoral Relevance of the Supreme Court

Abstract

Despite the Supreme Court’s lack of direct electoral accountability, voters may factor its outputs into their voting decisions because elected representatives can affect the Court’s powers and composition. In this paper, we uncover an ironic predicament that faces candidates running on reforming this institution. Citizens who possess higher levels of diffuse support for the Court are more likely to rank it as an important factor in their voting logic. But because this diffuse support has sorted along partisan lines, candidate messaging about reform may not motivate partisans who have lost support for the Court because they view it as less important than other pressing issues. Thus, although Democrats are sympathetic to reform, Democratic candidates may have weak incentives to promote reform given low levels of diffuse support among their constituents. This dynamic mitigates against the possibility of a public or congressional backlash against the Court, preserving the status quo.