Voter Rolloff in a Low-Information Context

Abstract

Hall notes that ballot rolloff in supreme court races is substantial but not random. Various institutional, election-specific, state, and district-level contextual forces lead rolloff to increase in some cases and decrease in others. However, it is not clear that Hall's findings apply to lower-level judicial elections because of the low-information environment in which those elections occur. Analyzing rolloff in 755 intermediate appellate court (IAC) elections from 2000 to 2007, we, with a few deviations, replicate Hall's study. The findings indicate that in many ways the variables that affect rolloff in supreme court elections are similar to those in IAC races although some differences do exist.