I thought this nugget on Under the Dome about some polling Bev Perdue's campaign did on newspaper endorsements was pretty telling: fewer than half of the electorate even knew that the papers had endorsed and a decent percentage of those who did thought they'd endorsed her.
The influence of newspaper endorsements is close to nil. They may have been more important at one point in time but voters' trust of the media has declined a good deal over the years and the newspaper slice of that media pie is in rapid decline as well.
I thought Pat McCrory wasted a lot of money in the closing stretch spending money on tv ads touting his newspaper endorsements instead of talking about something that might have been more compelling to voters. I was amazed at how hyper some of his internet supporters got about the endorsements, seeming to think they were the final nail in Perdue's coffin. They're of little interest to folks outside the 95th percentile of following politics, and those folks already have their minds made up by the time endorsements come out.
The papers were almost unanimous in endorsing both McCrory and Richard Moore but Perdue's the one taking office Saturday. Nothing wrong with papers endorsing and I know all candidates would rather have them than not, but they don't count for much.
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I would love to know what McCrory's internals showed about the effectiveness of the endorsement ads - particularly relative to his other lines of attack. Who were his media/polling consultants?
I don't know who they were, but they sucked! I know his internal polling assumed a 17% black electorate.
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