John Kerry's Record Endorsements

John Kerry is crushing George Bush with newspaper endorsements around the county. Kerry now has the endorsements of 162 newspapers compared to 129 for Bush. This includes 38 papers endorsing Kerry in 2004 that previously endorsed Bush in 2000. Bush has only six "flip-flop" papers that endorsed Gore in 2000.

In terms of circulation numbers, Kerry has a commanding lead of 18.4 million versus 11.8 million for Bush.

Predictably, Bush's campaign has tried to minimize the significance of the newspaper editorials. "Look, the Republican candidate will never win the contest for editorial board endorsements," explained RNC chairman Ed Gillespie to CNN. "The major dailies across the country tend to skew liberal."

The GOP has tried to paint the media as liberally-biased for the last 40 years, but it just doesn't hold water. Regardless of the political inclinations of most journalists (which to my knowledge has never been properly surveyed), most newspaper publishers - who have the final say on endorsements - tend to be Republican like most top corporate executives. And Salon's look at newspaper endorsement trends shows that Bush's campaign is flat-out wrong.

Since 1940 (when Editor & Publisher magazine first began tracking endorsement trends), only two Democratic candidates have won a majority of newspaper endorsements: Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won twice as many newspaper endorsements as Walter Mondale.
In 1996, Bob Dole outpaced Bill Clinton in newspaper endorsements by a 2:1 margin, despite his tepid polling response at the time.
In 2000, George Bush outpolled Al Gore in newspaper endorsements by a 2:1 margin.

Where is that liberal bias? And why have so many of George Bush's former endorsers abandoned him?

© 2004. All original articles and commentaries published on this site remain the copyright of Kevin C. Goebel except where otherwise attributed. You may use excerpts with an attributed to The Imperial Gazette and a link to either www.cosmomovieawards.com/ig or directly to the excerpted article. For additional information, or to be alerted for new articles and updates, please email the Royal Scribe.