This chapter tackles two additional activities of the pollster as fortune teller. The first is the assessment and prediction of government approval ratings. As we have already seen in Chapter 8, approval ratings are extremely important in predicting elections. There is both an art and science to the analysis of such measures. Here, we want to lay out an analytical framework which will allow pollsters to assess both structural and policy factors related to approval ratings and then how to utilize multiple methods to triangulate future outcomes. We will focus on the Biden administration circa August 2022. Ultimately, a fairly large component of a pollster’s workload is the continual assessment of government initiatives and their convergence (or not) with what people want.

The second is a discussion of more context-based analysis. The pollster has an important role in helping decision-makers understand the bigger picture. Here, broader demographic and social trends help gird such analysis.

Pursuing German and Japanese war criminals and gaining compensation for survivors were high on the agenda of the victorious Allies after 1945. Enthusiasm, however, waned considerably and unforgivably in the context of the Cold War and partial restoration of pre-war elite networks. Long-term continuities in business–government networks in the coordinated economies of Germany and Japan meant that some of those who had been charged with war crimes – and/or those whose wealth derived at least in part from activities associated with the war – figured prominently in major post-war scandals. Over time, however, those directly tainted with pre-1945 crimes and practices begin to retire and die off. Moreover, the export orientation of both countries, combined with other aspects of the globalisation of business, finance, and markets, also changed the composition and dynamics of elite networks. This happened more rapidly and thoroughly in Germany than in Japan, owing to Germany’s greater dependence on exports; its central role in the European Union; and its greater openness to foreign imports and investment. German corporate governance therefore experienced more far-reaching reform than its Japanese counterpart. For many of the same reasons, Germany has made greater strides towards coming to terms with its pre-1945 past than Japan.

West Virginia is the most recent state to have changed from partisan to nonpartisan elections for its judges, with the first nonpartisan elections occurring in 2016. Impetus for change came in significant part after controversial elections for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, one in 1988 and another in 2004. However, those controversies were not enough to produce the change; it took the capture of the West Virginia legislature by the Republican Party, which had long advocated for nonpartisan elections, to produce the 2015 legislation that made the change. Democratic legislators were divided about the change, with some voting in favor and some opposed; the Democratic governor signed the legislation. Unrelated to the change in election format, in 2018 the justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals became embroiled in allegations of misuse of government property and extravagant expenditures on their offices. These allegations led to three justices resigning, one of whom pled guilty to criminal charges, and a second being convicted at trial and sentenced to prison.

The voters in both Florida and South Dakota approved the adoption of a Missouri Plan system for appellate courts, Florida in the 1970s and South Dakota in 1980. Voters in both states later rejected extending the system to trial courts. The adoption of the Missouri Plan for Florida’s appellate courts in 1976 came in the wake of a series of scandals involving the justices of the Florida Supreme Court. Two years later and then again 22 years later, Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission put the question of whether to extend the Missouri Plan to the trial courts before the voters, who then rejected the proposed change. The impetus for change in selection/retention of South Dakota’s Supreme Court justices appears to have come largely from the state bar. In 1980, the voters approved a Missouri Plan system for the South Dakota Supreme Court and did not divide along party lines. In the early 2000s, a proposal to extend the system to the trial courts was presented to the voters, who rejected the proposal.

Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and New Hampshire differ from one another. In Pennsylvania, there were long-standing efforts by groups such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters to get a constitutional amendment for a Missouri Plan on the ballot; however, members of the legislature from both parties have not been supportive of the effort. In Minnesota, the decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White prompted concern that judicial elections would become politicized. However, the fact that no such politicization has happened, combined with the lack of interest in making such a change among Republican legislators, has meant that little has happened. In Texas, a push for a constitutional amendment implementing the Missouri Plan system was made by some Republican members of the Texas Supreme Court. However, the plan provoked little interest from the Republican-dominated legislature. In New Hampshire, where there are no popular judicial elections, a series of scandals plus conflict between the state supreme court and the legislature led to unsuccessful efforts to impose a nominating commission requirement and/or senate confirmation.

The common thread in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma is the effort by conservatives, both in the legislature and outside, to end the role of nominating commissions in judicial selection. This effort was prompted in each state by decisions made by the state's supreme court, when the majority of justices were selected by Democratic governors. It also reflects the broader view among conservatives, demonstrated by what happened in Tennessee where the nominating commission was abolished, that the dominance of lawyers on the nominating commission tends to produce liberal judges. In these three states, with the exception of one court, eliminating the nominating commission requires a constitutional amendment. The one exception is the intermediate Kansas Court of Appeals because it is a creation of legislature, which allows the legislature to set the method of selection and retention; in 2014, the Kansas legislature abolished the nominating commission for that court. The Republican-controlled legislatures in these three states have not succeeded in getting the needed majorities, or supermajorities, required to send a constitutional amendment to the voters.

In Nevada and Ohio proposals to adopt the Missouri Plan for some or all of the state’s courts were rejected by the voters on multiple occasions. In neither state does it appear that partisan politics was a major element of the decisions to put to the voters the question of adopting a Missouri Plan system, nor does partisan politics appear to be an element of the voters’ rejection of the proposals. Three times, without success, the Nevada legislature sent proposals for constitutional amendments implementing a Missouri Plan system to the voters (1972, 1988, and 2010). The 2010 proposal came in the wake of an extensive newspaper exposé, tracing the cozy relationships between some Nevada judges and litigants who appeared in their courts. Even with this scandal, voters were unwilling to give up their existing role in judicial selection and retention. In Ohio, an initiative petition put a proposed constitutional amendment on the 1987 ballot that would have adopted the Missouri Plan for appellate judges and would have created a local option for that system for trial judges. Ohioans rejected the amendment by a margin of almost 2 to 1.

Connecticut, Rhode Island, and South Carolina do not use any form of popular election in selecting state judges. Selection is (or was) through either election by the legislature or appointment by the governor. In each of the three states, one or more controversies surrounding either the selection process or serving judges provided the impetus for changes that required persons selected as judges to have been screened and either approved or recommended by a committee or commission. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, the screening body forwards a short list to the selecting authority; in South Carolina, the screening body reviews applications from persons who desire to be on a list of those eligible for appointment in the future. To the extent that partisanship influenced the change process, it was primarily focused on the composition of the screening body rather than on whether there should be such a body.