(iPoster) Post-Dobbs Preferences for Descriptive Representation on the Supreme Court

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Political Science Education & Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Abstract

What affects Americans' preferences for Supreme Court justices? Because public opinion strongly influences Senate confirmation votes, it is important to understand how Americans prioritize factors such as a nominee's age, gender, current position, partisanship, race/ethnicity, religion, education, and law clerk experience. In this study, I use a preregistered conjoint experiment (n = 9,895) to examine all of these factors, with a particular focus on race and gender. This study is the first conjoint experiment to measure preferences for Supreme Court nominees in the post-Roe era, where the gender of potential nominees may have become more salient for Americans concerned about abortion rights one way or the other. First, I confirm prior findings that Americans prefer co-racial nominees. Second, contrary to previous research, this post-Dobbs experiment shows that Americans now prefer co-gender nominees as well. This study presents important implications for theories of descriptive representation more broadly.

Author

• Victor Yuhang Wu, Stanford University