Partisan hacks? How election cases divide the Supreme Court

In a polarized political environment, the Supreme Court has issued several controversial decisions affecting the conduct of American elections. Observers have criticized the Court as possibly being motivated by partisan gain, yet scholarship has not systematically compared these cases to others. In this paper, I consider whether election cases have more partisan-conforming voting, controlling for the key variables that the literature has found predict polarized voting. I find that overall, election law cases indeed divide the justices more by partisanship than non-election cases. This depends on the era and does not hold following Gorsuch’s appointment—not because election law cases are no longer divisive, but because partisan voting in other similar cases has increased. However, voting in election law cases is no more partisan in presidential election years than at other times. This study sheds light on the Court’s role in American democracy in an era of heightened partisan polarization.