Is Nine Too Much? How the Gender Composition of State Supreme Courts Influences Support for Female Candidates

Abstract Women may have broken the glass ceiling in terms of appointments or election to the highest courts in the U.S. but barriers still exist. In this study, we explore whether voters who have the opportunity to select state supreme court justices account for gender composition when deciding whether to support a female candidate. We test this proposition using data from the Judicial Elections Database Initiative and two online experiments. Our own analysis across both the real-world elections and our experiments reveals that voters are not significantly affected by gender diversity on the court when deciding whether to support a judicial female candidate, even when those levels are at an extreme.