Replication Data for: Can Democratic Principles Protect High Courts from Partisan Backlash? Public Reactions to the Kenyan Supreme Court’s Role in the 2017 Election Crisis

Public support is central to the emergence of judicial power. Conventional wisdom holds that citizen commitment to democracy and the rule of law sustains this support. An implication is that such commitments should protect courts from partisan backlash following contentious rulings. But this remains largely untested. The Kenyan Supreme Court’s historic 2017 elections rulings provide an unusual opportunity to test this expectation. After annulling the incumbent president’s victory, the Court upheld his controversial repeat-election win. With data from a national panel survey—conducted before and after the repeat election—we find important partisan-based withdrawals/increases in judicial-power support. There is no evidence that democratic principles attenuated partisan backlash; some were associated with its amplification. However, partisan losers maintain moderately high support despite backlash. Results advance debates about public support for judicial power and provide new evidence about public reactions to assertions of judicial authority in new democracies and electoral autocratic regimes.