As you know, I tracked endorsements for multiple groups in all Democratic judicial primary races in this Google spreadsheet. There were 30 such contested primaries, and 15 endorsing organizations. How did these organizations’ candidates do? After highlighting the winners in the spreadsheet in green and the runoff participants in yellow, to make it easy to count them up at a glance, I ran the numbers. Here’s how they look:
Endorser Win Loss Runoff =============================== Chron 19 7 4 CHCDEO 16 8 4 DC 8 13 1 H-BAD 18 7 4 HCTD 18 8 3 AWA 15 8 3 AFL-CIO 11 12 2 HGLBTPC 14 12 2 DFH 14 10 2 MABAH 14 10 2 LLLC 13 12 2 PBA 13 5 2 HCD 13 14 2 HASD 12 12 2 HSYD 12 15 2
Not all organizations endorsed in every race. In any race where an organization recommended more than one candidate, I did not count that in the totals. As such, the rows will not all add up the same.
How about that Houston Chronicle endorsement? The value of a newspaper endorsement is often questioned, but I think it’s safe to say that in a relatively low-information race such as these, it can definitely carry some weight. Well, on the Democratic side, anyway. On the Republican side, their list of endorsed candidates, which here includes two Supreme Court races and one Court of Appeals race, had four wins, eight losses, and two runoffs. Make of that what you will.
As for the other organizations (I’m including my colleague Stace at Dos Centavos as an organization for simplicity’s sake), some obviously backed more winners than others. They all had their own criteria and processes, and I don’t think you can really judge them on how many winners or losers they picked. For one thing, as we know, there were factors beyond their control at work, and for another, I don’t think there was a “right” answer in a lot of these races. The groups made their choices for their own reasons, as did the voters.
Toward the end, I added Keith Branch and Mary C. Acosta–not on the blog post, but on the virtual slate card. So that makes 10 for me…whew! Double digits!
Great job Kuff!
Can you post an update explaing the Acronyms? Example of what I am lookling for is; who is H-BAD and who is AWA?