Assessing how Issues, Judicial Experience, and Partisanship Affect Voting for Texas Judges.

Drawing on a 2009 statewide telephone poll of registered voters in Texas, this paper investigates how voters, when voting for judge, weigh partisanship versus other factors such as campaign issues or judicial experience. We employ an experimental manipulation where respondents in our survey were provided with a hypothetical judicial candidate (varying in campaign theme as well as varying in partisanship) and then asked about the likelihood of voting for that candidate. We found that individuals rely heavily on party as a shortcut when evaluating judicial candidates. We also found that respondents with greater levels of political sophistication were more likely to be influenced by a candidate?s issue positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]