Gender Shapes Judicial Ads But Not Voter Support

Why Gendered Messaging in Judicial Campaigns? 🔍

Judicial elections have seen rising numbers of female candidates, but scholars still know little about how candidate gender shapes campaign appeals or how voters respond to those appeals. This study asks whether female and male judicial candidates use different crime-related messages — and whether those differences affect voter support.

Theory: Gendered Strategic Messaging 🧭

The authors build a theoretical framework predicting that female judicial candidates will emphasize criminal justice reform themes, while male candidates will favor tough-on-crime rhetoric. The framework links expectations about gendered reputational advantages to strategic choices in judicial campaigning, a context that differs from legislative races because judicial norms and voter expectations about impartiality constrain messaging.

What the Authors Measured 🛠️

• Content analysis of judicial campaign advertisements from 2017 and 2018 to document how often candidates used tough-on-crime versus reform appeals.
• A survey experiment that presented voters with judicial candidate messages framing crime either in tough-on-crime or reform terms and measured voter support.

Key Findings 📌

• Female candidates use some forms of tough-on-crime appeals less frequently than male candidates.
• Candidate gender is associated with mentions of some reform-oriented appeals, though this relationship is not uniform across all reform messages.
• The survey experiment finds little evidence that voter support depends on an interaction between candidate gender and the type of crime message; voters did not differentially reward or punish messages by gender in a clear, consistent way.

What This Means ✅

The results suggest judicial candidates make distinct strategic choices by gender in campaign messaging, but those choices do not straightforwardly translate into different voter responses in the authors' experimental setting. The study highlights the need for more work on how judicial campaign appeals operate in practice, how they vary from legislative campaigning, and when messaging affects electoral success.