News-Record.com

A few years ago, as editorial page editor of the High Point Enterprise, I did a pretty close analysis of election results and endorsements. I found evidence of a significant impact only in the statewide judicial contests where candidates endorsed by the Enterprise consistently gained several hundred votes in High Point beyond what normal party-line voting would have produced. My assumption, admittedly supported only by anecdotal evidence, was that voters know very little about statewide judicial candidates and do rely on newspaper endorsements to help guide them in these races. The N&R editorial board is interviewing the candidates for N.C. Supreme Court and N.C. Court of Appeals, as well as for Guilford County District Court, during this campaign and will offer endorsements.

Thanks, Doug. My experience when I was an editorial page editor was similar. The interesting aspect of endorsement editorials was that readers would occasionally accuse us of being out of touch with the citizenry -- they still do, of course -- but the elections results tended to match up with the endorsements three out of four times. I don't think that readers were following our endorsements that closely; I just think we had similar values.