What's in a name? A scholar offers an opinion

In the course of my primary project, I had the opportunity to correspond with Albert J. Klumpp, PhD, a Research Analyst with the Chicago firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.

Dr. Klumpp's 2005 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Illinois (Chicago) was entitled, "Judicial Retention Elections in Cook County: Exercise of Democracy, or Exercise in Futility." He has since published in Chicago legal publications on retention elections including, "Voter Information and Judicial Retention Elections in Illinois," 94 Ill. B.J. 538 (October 2006) (membership required), and "Cook County Judicial Elections: Partisanship, Campaign Spending, & Voter Information," CBA Record, January 2007 (p. 34).

While he continues to study judicial retention elections, Klumpp has developed "a model for analyzing primary elections" that he's only just begun to test. Klumpp wrote that his tentative model "indicates that female candidates had a gender advantage of nearly 200,000 votes. That's for one female candidate running against one or more male candidates; multiple female candidates in a contest split the advantage. That compares to shifts of around 60,000 for slating, 120,000 for a sweep of superior recommendations from the Tribune, Sun-Times, CBA and CCL, and 130,000 for an Irish-name advantage. I don't have final figures on campaign spending so these numbers could change somewhat -- campaign spending may have had an effect in a few contests -- and with only a dozen races it's not exactly a large data set, but the model appears to work very well so I think those numbers will pretty much hold up."

If I understand this correctly, this model would predict that a woman two years out of law school, but possessed of an obviously Irish name, would pretty much always beat a man with a non-Irish name even if the man were (a) slated by the Democratic Party, (b) endorsed by both Chicago daily papers, and (c) rated qualified by both the CBA and CCL.

If this tentative model is even close to accurate, the need for redoubled efforts at voter education in judicial primary elections is clearly demonstrated.

And just one other thing -- only a 60,000 vote boost for being slated?

Wow.