Since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death over the weekend, one of the big debates has been over how the fight to confirm a new Supreme Court justice will reshape the 2016 presidential election. Although some pundits and scholars have, fittingly, written elegant and well-argued pieces about how the election will become a referendum on the Supreme Court and the issues the court is likely to examine in the coming years (abortion, voting rights, campaign finance, state redistricting rules), the actual impact on voting of a protracted fight that fails to fill the Supreme Court vacancy may be marginal — at least in the general election (the primaries may be a different story). CONT.
Julia Azari (Marquette), FiveThirtyEight