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The Tuesday Advantage of Politicians Endorsed by American Newspapers

  • Fernanda Leite Lopez de Leon EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: October 9, 2013
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
From the journal The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy Volume 13 Issue 2

Abstract

This article documents the electoral advantage of candidates who have a newspaper endorsement published on Election Day compared to other endorsed candidates. I provide evidence that this advantage is not driven by a selection effect, suggesting that it is instead explained by readers deciding how to vote based on endorsements read on Election Day. Moreover, candidates who have a different political orientation from their endorsing newspapers benefit more from this endorsement than other candidates. These results are based on a newly-compiled dataset matching county-level data of 826 endorsed candidates’ election results with newspaper and county characteristics.

Keywords: newspaper endorsements; Election Day; media effects

Acknowledgments:

I am grateful to Nuno Limao and two anonymous referees for constructive and thoughtful suggestions. I also thank Dan Benjamin, Francine Blau, Steve Coate, Ben Ho, Brian Knight, Kevin Morison, Jeffrey Prince, and Ariel White for helpful comments.

Appendix

NewspaperStateNewspaperState
Chico Enterprise-RecordCAThe Huron Daily TribuneMI
Los Angeles TimesCAThe Lansing State JournalMI
Merced Sun-StarCAThe Muskegon ChronicleMI
Press-TelegramCAThe Saginaw NewsMI
San Francisco ChronicleCATimes HeraldMI
San Gabriel Valley TribuneCALincoln Journal StarNE
San Jose Mercury NewsCAOmaha World-HeraldNE
The CalifornianCAAkron Beacon JournalOH
The Desert SunCAAthens MessengerOH
The Fresno BeeCALancaster Eagle-GazetteOH
The Modesto BeeCAMassilon – The IndependentOH
The Monterey County HeraldCAMorning JournalOH
The Oakland TribuneCANews JournalOH
The Orange County RegisterCARepositoryOH
The Press DemocratCAThe AdvocateOH
The Press-EnterpriseCAThe BladeOH
The RecordCAThe Cincinnati EnquirerOH
The San Diego Union-TribuneCAThe Cincinnati PostOH
The TribuneCAThe Columbus DispatchOH
Times-StandardCAThe Plain DealerOH
Tri-Valley HeraldCABaker City HeraldOR
Ventura County StarCABulletinOR
Visalia Times-DeltaCACorvalis Gazette TimesOR
Bradenton HeraldFLMail TribuneOR
Charlote SunFLStatesman JournalOR
Daytona Beach News-JournalFLThe ObserverOR
Florida TodayFLThe OregonianOR
Naples Daily NewsFLThe Register-GuardOR
Orlando SentinelFLAmarillo Daily NewsTX
Pensacola News JournalFLAustin American-StatesmanTX
Sarasota Herald-TribuneFLBeaumont EnterpriseTX
St. Petersburg TimesFLEl Paso TimesTX
Sun-SentinelFLFort Worth Star-TelegramTX
Tallahassee DemocratFLHouston ChronicleTX
The Florida Times-UnionFLLongview News-JournalTX
The Miami HeraldFLLubbock Avalanche-JournalTX
The News-PressFLMarshall News MessengerTX
The Palm Beach PostFLMidland Reporter-TelegramTX
The Tampa TribuneFLSan Angelo Standard-TimesTX
Venice Gondolier SunFLSan Antonio Express-NewsTX
Battle Creek EnquirerMIThe Dallas Morning NewsTX
Bay City TimesMIWaco Tribune-HeraldTX
Daily NewsMIWichita Falls Times Record NewsTX
Daily TelegramMIGreen Bay Press-GazetteWI
Detroit Free PressMIHerald Times ReporterWI
Flint JournalMIJournal TimesWI
Kalamazoo GazetteMIMilwaukee Journal SentinelWI
Midland Daily NewsMIThe Capital TimesWI
Record EagleMIThe Post-CrescentWI
The Ann Arbor NewsMIThe Sheboygan PressWI
The Detroit NewsMIWisconsin State JournalWI
The Grand Rapids PressMI

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  1. 1

    I refer to endorsements published on Election Day as Tuesday Endorsements. Tuesday Effect refers to the causal effect of a Tuesday Endorsement on election outcomes and provides a suggested interpretation of the Tuesday Advantage. These terms are used, because American elections take place on Tuesdays.

  2. 2

    According to a survey conducted by the Cable Television Advertisement Bureau in 2011, 75% of voters are undecided about their votes in local races one week before an election.

  3. 3

    Limited attention is discussed and formalized in DellaVigna (2009). In his framework, he assumes that the value of a good V is determined by an opaque (o) and a visible (v) component, as in . However, due to inattention, a consumer perceives the value to be , where θ is the degree of inattention. In the context of this article, the opaque information refers to endorsements published before Election Day. This assumption is in line with the intuition that Tuesday recommendations are more salient, since they are provided on the day they are used.

  4. 4

    There is a vast body of literature that shows a strong and positive association between votes and received endorsements, including Erickson (1976), Coombs (1981), Bullock (1984), Lieske (1989), and Krebs (1998). Ladd and Lenz (2009) use quasi-experimental evidence to establish a causal relationship. They explore an exogenous shift in newspaper endorsements to the Labour Party in the 1997 British election and find a large endorsement effect.

  5. 5

    If a candidate received an endorsement from multiple newspapers, his/her electoral outcome at the county level was matched to the characteristics of the endorsing newspaper with the highest circulation in the county. Upon following this rule, each candidate was coded to only one last endorsement publication day per county.

  6. 6
  7. 7

    These states were selected because the group of newspapers audited by ABC is more representative of the total number of newspapers than in other states. They represent around 30% of total newspapers in these eight states. For the remaining states, ABC’s sample represents around 20% of total newspapers. Representativeness is crucial to the analysis. Locations where ABC newspapers are not representative are more prone to have county electoral outcomes erroneously matched with a newspaper, and, therefore, with its last endorsement publication date.

  8. 8

    The remaining newspapers (24%) switched their endorsement timing across the 2002 and 2006 elections. These are more likely to endorse tactically and choose to publish their list of endorsements on Election Day when they are more confident about their endorsed candidates’ chances of winning the election. Based on results not shown in this article, a Tuesday Advantage is not revealed for candidates endorsed by this group of papers.

  9. 9

    In addition to the proximity to the election, these days – Monday and Sunday – were chosen because most of the newspapers (87%) in the sample last published their endorsements within three days of the election.

  10. 10

    The approach of exploring within-candidate variation in endorsements, with the inclusion of candidate-fixed effects, is possible for gubernatorial races, because these candidates receive four newspaper endorsements on average.

  11. 11

    According to a National survey conducted by the Cable Television Advertisement Bureau in 2011, 60% of individuals decide their votes a week before the national election. This proportion is 75% for local elections.

  12. 12

    I follow the definition in Snyder and Stromberg (2010, 361).

    where is newspaper j’s share of newspaper sales in county c, and is the share of newspaper readers who live in jurisdiction z. Like Snyder and Stromberg (2010), I use Audit Bureau of Circulation data on all available newspapers and information on newspapers’ circulation in each county to derive and .

  13. 13

    Snyder and Stromberg (2010) document that an increase in congruency from zero to one is associated with around 170 stories about the congressperson.

  14. 14

    As discussed in Snyder and Stromberg (2010), the congruency measure explores the “economic geography” factors that determine newspapers’ political coverage (such as their reader share in the area). The fact that congruency matters in determining the Tuesday Effect shows that economic incentives also explain media influence on elections.

Published Online: 2013-10-09

©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin / Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2012-0043
Keywords for this article
newspaper endorsements; Election Day; media effects

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Masthead
  3. Advances
  4. When Does Inter-School Competition Matter? Evidence from the Chilean “Voucher” System
  5. Investment, Dynamic Consistency and the Sectoral Regulator’s Objective
  6. Contributions
  7. Vertical Contracts and Mandatory Universal Distribution
  8. Ticket Pricing and Scalping: A Game Theoretical Approach
  9. Loyalty Discounts
  10. Age, Human Capital, and the Quality of Work: New Evidence from Old Masters
  11. Effects of the Endogenous Scope of Preferentialism on International Goods Trade
  12. Fiscal Decentralization and Environmental Infrastructure in China
  13. Declining Equivalence Scales and Cost of Children: Evidence and Implications for Inequality Measurement
  14. Political Parties, Candidate Selection, and Quality of Government
  15. Professors’ Beauty, Ability, and Teaching Evaluations in Italy
  16. Pass-through of Per Unit and ad Valorem Consumption Taxes: Evidence from Alcoholic Beverages in France
  17. The Tuesday Advantage of Politicians Endorsed by American Newspapers
  18. Topics
  19. The Effects of Medicaid Earnings Limits on Earnings Growth among Poor Workers
  20. Opportunities Denied, Wages Diminished: Using Search Theory to Translate Audit-Pair Study Findings into Wage Differentials
  21. Horizontal Mergers, Firm Heterogeneity, and R&D Investments
  22. Product Differentiation and Consumer Surplus in the Microfinance Industry
  23. The Multitude of Alehouses: The Effects of Alcohol Outlet Density on Highway Safety
  24. Solving the Endogeneity Problem in Empirical Cost Functions: An Application to US Banks
  25. The Internet, News Consumption, and Political Attitudes – Evidence for Sweden
  26. A Cross-Cultural Real-Effort Experiment on Wage-Inequality Information and Performance
  27. Are Students Dropping Out or Simply Dragging Out the College Experience? Persistence at the Six-Year Mark
  28. The Welfare Effects of Location and Quality in Oligopoly
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