This semester, I am taking an editorial and opinion writing class, and, of course, it would only seem fitting to learn about presidential endorsements with this being election season and the debate on campus.
In class, we recently talked about different studies done on endorsements in newspapers. A study by Steven Ansolaberhe, a researcher at MIT, showed that editorial endorsements usually only raised a presidential candidate’s vote by one percent to five percent.
So why continue to have editorial endorsements? It is mainly because those who read it might actually stop to think about the issues and if they want to vote for this candidate. As someone who is still unsure of how they will vote, I think that people should try to read endorsements and then look up the issues for themselves so as not to just go off of what the paper says.
The study also showed that from 1940-1950, about 60 percent of editorial endorsements endorsed Republicans and incumbents. Since 1950, papers endorse the parties almost evenly with Democrats taking about 10 percent more while 90 percent go with incumbents.
I would be interested to see how this study would go for this election, especially since no incumbents are running in this election.