If the election were decided by numbers of endorsements from newspaper dailies, Barack Obama would win in a landslide. Editor & Publisher counts 194 papers casting editorial votes for Obama, including, as Jon noted, the Anchorage Daily News, while only 82 make the case for McCain.
Obama’s lopsided margin, including most of the major papers that have decided so far, is in stark contrast to John Kerry barely edging George W. Bush in endorsements in 2004 by 213 to 205…
At least 38 papers have now switched to Obama from Bush in 2004, with just four flipping to McCain. The latest majors to flipflop to Obama: the papers in Providence and Fort Worth. In addition, several top papers that went for Bush in 2004 have now chosen not to endorse this year, the latest being the Indianapolis Star in key swing state Indiana.
If the list tallied circulation figures for those papers, the difference would be even starker. In Florida, the largest of the four papers endorsing McCain is the conservative Tampa Tribune, circulation 220,522. The others are more typical of the types of editors supporting the Republican: the Brandenton Herald, circ. 48,618; the Palatka Daily News, circ. 11,000; and the Cape Coral Daily Breeze, circ. 2,015.
The largest California paper to endorse McCain is the San Diego Union-Tribune, read by 288,669 San Diegans, many of whom presumably reside on the Navy base.
No North Carolina newspapers have yet sided with McCain.
McCain does pick up one daily with possibly universal appeal: the Roswell Daily Record is read by 11,700 New Mexicans, as well as an undetermined number of UFO crew members.
