Gender and Donations in State Appeals Court Elections

• In Event: Please Send Money: The Gender Gap in Campaign Finance

Abstract

The impact of gender in judicial elections is still an area of exploration by many
political science scholars. Although 2018 was marked as ‘the year of
the woman’, with a significant increase in the number of women serving in both
chambers of the Congress, what remains underresearched is gender representation in state judicial systems, particularly at the intermediate appellate court level. Specifically, we examine the ability of female candidates for state intermediate appellate courts to fundraise, compared to their male counterparts, and whether an increase in female representation on these courts over the past decades is because women are at least as successful as male candidates in attracting both donors and high dollar amounts, or if women's representation is increasing despite being unable to raise as much money as male candidates. Using the Data Set on Ideology Money in Elections and Politics(DIME) we explore the impact of campaign fundraising on female judges running for intermediate appellate courts.

Authors

• Andrew Hewitt Smith, Univ of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Conny Sidi Kazungu, University of Tennessee-Knoxville