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This paper estimates the influence of newspaper endorsements on voting behavior in presidential elections. The analysis focuses on the impact of newspaper endorsements in the 1964 presidential election-the one recent presidential election in which a considerable number of newspapers endorsed the Democratic candidate. Multiple regression analysis of the 1964 vote in 223 northern counties suggests that a Democratic endorsement from the local newspaper added about five percentage points to the 1960-1964 Democratic gain. The same estimate is obtained from an application of two-stage least squares. From this result, along with evidence from other election years, it is argued that newspaper endorsements exert an important influence on the outcomes of presidential elections.
Robert S. Erikson (Sat,) studied this question.