Ballotpedia: Our approach to covering endorsements
This page describes Ballotpedia's approach to covering endorsements of candidates. This policy does not govern our coverage of ballot measure campaign endorsements. Below you will find a description of the elections that receive endorsements coverage and how those endorsements are displayed across Ballotpedia.
Elections with endorsements coverage
Battleground primary elections
Endorsements can be particularly helpful for voters trying to decide between candidates in battleground primaries. There are often few stated policy differences between candidates belonging to the same political party. Endorsements from individuals and organizations can help voters better understand these differences. Depending on the coverage level given to a specific election, endorsements on Ballotpedia may appear as either a table or a list of links. To read about that distinction, click here.
In these primaries, we cover endorsements issued by:
- Newspaper editorial boards
- Current or former presidents and vice presidents
- Current members of Congress
- Noteworthy presidential candidates
- Current officeholders holding any state-level office
- Any former officeholder or candidate for the office up for election
- Political parties (federal, statewide, or local branches if they are a prominent part of the campaign)
- State party leaders
- Major organizations with national reach, or their state-level affiliates
- Other well-known individuals and organizations
Battleground general elections
In general elections, endorsements often fall along party lines. Democrats endorse Democrats and Republicans endorse Republicans. Those sorts of endorsements may be less helpful for a voter in choosing which candidate to support. As a result, we limit our coverage of endorsements in battleground general elections to those issued by:
- Elected officials endorsing across party lines
- Satellite groups endorsing a candidate in a party they don't typically align with
- Newspaper editorial boards
- An individual who formerly held the seat or office up for election
- The incumbent governor of the state in which the election is taking place
- Elected officials or individuals who themselves draw significant attention. This list includes, but is not limited to:
When available, we will include links to candidate websites that list all of that candidate's endorsements.
We pay close attention to the balance of our general election endorsement tables. If we can only identify endorsements for a single candidate, a table will look very much like we are deliberately leaving off the other. Because of this, if endorsements for only one candidate qualify for inclusion on our election coverage, we will not create a table listing those endorsements. Instead, readers will be directed to the candidate's page to view their list of endorsements.
School board elections
In 2023, Ballotpedia covered all school board elections taking place in 10 states: Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. In these school board elections, we sought to gather endorsements from organizations, officeholders, and media outlets.
To read more about this project, click here.
How we display endorsements
Ballotpedia displays endorsements in the following ways:
Battleground elections
All battleground election pages include links to candidates' endorsement lists on their campaign websites, as available, so that readers can access full endorsement lists for each candidate.
Additonally, certain battleground election pages include a noteworthy endorsements table. The noteworthy endorsements table displays all of the endorsements that meet the criteria outlined in the sections above for primary and general election endorsements.
Candidate profiles
Endorsements that a candidate received will appear on candidate profile articles below the election results box for that particular year. A candidate who has run in multiple elections may have multiple endorsement lists.
Incumbent profiles
Profiles for members of Congress and governors will contain lists of endorsements those individuals made in races within Ballotpedia's coverage scope that meet the criteria above. These individuals may also have a list of endorsements if they are running in an election in line with the criteria stated above.
Submissions
If you are aware of endorsements that meet any of the above criteria but are not currently on Ballotpedia, please use this form to submit them for review. Submissions that do not meet the criteria above will not be added to the website.
See also
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