Justices Denied: A County-Level Analysis of the 2010 Iowa Supreme Court Retention Election

In 2010 the Iowa electorate denied retention to all three Supreme Court justices on the ballot. We hypothesize that when retention elections feature vigorous campaigns, they can be explained by many of the same factors that affect outcomes in partisan and nonpartisan elections. In particular, we expect partisanship, the amount of campaigning (advertising), and political context (same-sex marriage) to explain the results in Iowa. We examine county-level election results, finding that the partisanship and concentration of evangelicals within a county, as well as the amount of advertising against the justices, explain the justices' vote share. We also find evidence that ballot roll-off decreased most in counties with high concentrations of evangelical adherents and where advertising was present.