Judicial Reports: Gender Judgment

By John Ennis

Posted: 10-06-06

 

A judicial campaign consultant quoted in this week’s lead story, “The Judge Who Came in From the Cold” declares, “When a man runs against a woman in New York County, he generally loses.” This passes for conventional wisdom in the borough of Manhattan, but is it true?

 

Given the rarity of contested judicial elections, IJS first wondered what the conventional wisdom was even based on — it’s not unlike drawing long-term atmospheric conclusions based on the passing of Halley’s Comet. Since 1990 there have been nine judicial races in Manhattan that counted only two candidates who were of opposite gender. (LexMetrics only looked at primary races because there are even fewer competitive general elections, and it eliminates party affiliation as a factor). Since the Republicans rarely ever field a judicial candidate in Manhattan, these nine races were all for the Democratic nominee:

 

Female Winners   6

Male Winners      3

 

The women win, but the sample size is very small. So, we expanded to all of New York City. There have been 20 such races since 1990 (19 Democratic, one Independence Party — again, no Republicans):

 

Female Winners    14

Male Winners         6

 

Sample size is still an issue, but the four outer boroughs favored women 8-3 vs. Manhattan’s 6-3. So, the conventional wisdom might transcend Manhattan.

 

The next step was to examine races with more than two candidates. It’s not as clean a comparison as head-to-head, but it’s worth analyzing. Since 1990, Manhattan has seen 10 multi-candidate primaries in which at least one male vied against at least one female.

 

                            Entered    Won    Percentage
Female Candidates      16           8          50%

Male Candidates         11           2          18%

Unknown                     4            0
(gender could not be determined because press reports didn’t print losing candidate’s name)

 

The sample size is still small, but if one were to add back in the head-to-head races:

 

                            Entered     Won    Percentage
Female Candidates      25         14          56%

Male Candidates          20          5          25%

Unknown                      4           0

 

Even though there were more female candidates, and they might split the gender votes, women are still winning more races.

 

Here are the other four boroughs in multi-candidate elections only:

 

                             Entered      Won    Percentage
Female Candidates      25           16          64%

Male Candidates          24            6          25%

Unknown                     13            0

 

Here are the figures combined with the head-to-head numbers for the outer boroughs:

 

                              Entered    Won    Percentage

Female Candidates       36         24         67%

Male Candidates           35         9          26%

Unknown                      13         0

 

In both cases, the outer boroughs have a larger disparity than Manhattan.

 

If you add all five boroughs together:

 

                           Entered     Won    Percentage
Female Candidates     61         38         62%

Male Candidates         55         14         25%

Unknown                    17          0

 

It can be safely said at the next judicial fundraiser that female candidates have an advantage over male candidates in New York City.

 

Posted by Ennis on October 6, 2006 08:03 AM to Judicial Reports