Unequal Competence? Why Criminal Justice Reformers Are Disadvantaged in Local Elections
2026-02-27
In elections for public safety officials, voters may select candidates based on job experience as well as on policy positions. If experienced candidates are more likely to hold conservative policy views, progressive candidates will be less likely to win. Using text analysis to classify 240 district attorney candidate positions in five states, I show that experienced candidates are more likely to hold “tough on crime” issue positions. In real elections in these states, experienced candidates are more likely to win, while candidate positions are unrelated to election outcomes. In a conjoint experiment where I provide voters information on both experience and candidate positions, voters still often select incongruent but experienced candidates. These results have implications for the movement to elect progressive prosecutors, and they shed light on public opinion and vote choice in an important but under-studied office. More broadly, the results suggest limits on ideological responsiveness when elected officials are both politicians and bureaucrats.