So did the political endorsements work?

Since I'm not feeling particularly creative today, I thought I would focus on a topic that I wrote about 2 blogs ago. If you can remember, I found an article that claimed political endorsements in newspapers do not influence public opinion. I think the topic of political endorsements and whether or not editors should allow them is particularly interesting.

I found a website that keeps track of all the newspaper political endorsements for the 2008 election (they have 2004 on there too). It's a very interesting website if you are interested in this topic, so check it out! Since I can't spend an hour plus on this blog with two exams coming up tomorrow, I only looked at all the states that McCain won and who their newspapers endorsed. Here is what I found:

MT- 3 papers Obama
SD- 2 papers McCain
ND- 2 papers McCain
NE- 4 papers McCain
KS- 1 McCain, 2 Obama
OK- 2 Obama, 4 McCain
TX- 8 Obama, 13 McCain
LA- 2 Obama, 1 McCain
ID- 1 Obama, 1 McCain
WY- 1 Obama
UT- 1 Obama, 1 McCain
AZ- 1 Obama, 2 McCain
AR- 1 Obama, 2 McCain
MS- 2 Obama
AL- 8 Obama, 6 McCain
GA- 3 Obama, 2 McCain
SC- 1 Obama, 5 McCain
TN- 2 Obama, 4 McCain
KY- 3 Obama, 3 McCain
WV- 3 Obama, 2 McCain
AK- 1 Obama, 1 McCain

McCain did come out on top most of the time, but Obama received a good amount of support from newspapers in red states. So that would make it seem that political endorsements don't work. But a good editor should never just look at that and accept that conclusion. An editor should look at what parts of the states these Obama-endorsing newspapers were from. Because there is a possibility that they are from counties that did vote Obama, but more counties voted McCain. If that was the case, political endorsements could have made a difference.

For the sake of time, I'm not going to look into all 50 plus newspapers and their county. I just wanted all of you to be aware of this website and the fact that political endorsements in newspapers may or may not work. Just remember that just looking at the up front statistics aren't enough, the deeper research could show us a totally different story! Like our class has taught us, always make sure your reporter did ALL the research before coming to his/her conclusion.