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The Des Moines Register’s Endorsements Of Hillary Clinton And Marco Rubio Aren’t Game Changers
But the endorsement could help Clinton because the Democratic race is so close.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/des-moines-register-endorses-clinton-rubio-primary-iowa/
The paper’s endorsement is credited for greatly improving the fortunes of 2004 Iowa runner-up John Edwards, but most of these candidates haven’t gotten anything like the Edwards bounce. The average post-endorsement bump has been a statistically insignificant 3 percentage points. That’s less than the 8-percentage-point bounce candidates have earned in New Hampshire after locking up an endorsement from the New Hampshire Union Leader. We can also see that both Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000 lost more than 5 percentage points after being endorsed by the Des Moines Register.
That’s not to say the paper’s endorsement is meaningless. For one, it may hold more sway for Democrats than for Republicans. All four of the Democrats who have gotten the endorsement have done better than projected, compared with three of the five Republicans. And this year it wouldn’t be surprising, for instance, if the Des Moines Register’s decision not to endorse Donald Trump doesn’t affect his fortunes too much given that the paper already called on him to drop out of the race.
The Des Moines Register is the largest paper in the state. Even if newspaper circulations are down and most people aren’t going to be swayed by an editorial page endorsement, it could help drive news coverage for days. Most important, both the Democratic and Republican races right now are very tight. Even though Rubio probably won’t receive enough of a boost to win the Republican caucuses in Iowa, the endorsement could help him finish higher there, in turn helping him in the fight to win the title of “top establishment candidate” in the GOP race. Clinton could be put over the top, however, even if she receives only the 1.1 percentage point bounce she got after the paper’s endorsement of her in 2008.
That’s not to say the paper’s endorsement is meaningless. For one, it may hold more sway for Democrats than for Republicans. All four of the Democrats who have gotten the endorsement have done better than projected, compared with three of the five Republicans. And this year it wouldn’t be surprising, for instance, if the Des Moines Register’s decision not to endorse Donald Trump doesn’t affect his fortunes too much given that the paper already called on him to drop out of the race.
The Des Moines Register is the largest paper in the state. Even if newspaper circulations are down and most people aren’t going to be swayed by an editorial page endorsement, it could help drive news coverage for days. Most important, both the Democratic and Republican races right now are very tight. Even though Rubio probably won’t receive enough of a boost to win the Republican caucuses in Iowa, the endorsement could help him finish higher there, in turn helping him in the fight to win the title of “top establishment candidate” in the GOP race. Clinton could be put over the top, however, even if she receives only the 1.1 percentage point bounce she got after the paper’s endorsement of her in 2008.
Please note for those who always rush in to bash Nate Silver. He is not the author of this article. FiveThirtyEight = >1 person.
Nate's statistical predictions of Hillary's actually winning the IA primary are still very high.
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Response to BlueMTexpat (Original post)
