Newspaper endorsements mean relatively little and impact competitive races on the margin, if at all. Often, the way a major city paper endorses can tell us where they view the race is headed, but outside of that we pretty much know why they endorse who they do.
The Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joni Ernst, canceled her sit down with the Des Moines Register editorial board Thursday as they were conducting “interviews” to decide its Senate endorsement. The move has stirred some controversy, though mostly among the DMR staff and their friends in other media outlets that agreed to cover the story.
However, judging by the response from “journalists” over at the Des Moines Register, the Ernst camp position isn’t difficult to understand. With her leading Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in the polls, there is little reason to subject yourself to media outlets that would likely try to trip you up.
“Recent editorials in the Des Moines Register make their position in this race perfectly clear, and it’s one that many voters across our state seem to disagree with,” Ernst campaign spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in a emailed statement. “With less than 12 days to go, time is precious and Joni wants to spend every minute talking to undecided voters, hearing their concerns, and demonstrating why we need a change in Washington.”
As the Hill noted today, the paper said called her idea “seeks to provide a fetus with the same ‘right to life’ as the rest of us.” The editorial board said she went “too far” and it was just a “political tactic.”
Register writers also took to social media to pan the decision. Rekha Basu, a columnist with the paper, questioned whether Ernst was “afraid of newspaper editorial boards.”
“Is Ernst that sensitive to the kinds of criticisms that invariably will come in such a high profile U.S. Senate race? Is she afraid of the scrutiny?” she asked on Facebook. “Would Ernst similarly thumb her nose at the press while serving in the Senate?”
Opinion editor Randy Evans tweeted asking whether Ernst was “avoiding tough questions.”
And that’s not even the worst of it.
In late September, the Des Moines Register Poll found Ernst leading Rep. Braley by 6 points, an identical lead found by quality independent pollster Quinnipiac University just a few days earlier. The Iowa Poll of 546 likely voters was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, which professed to have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. But, in fact, they are being modest.
According to PPD’s Pollster Scorecard, Seltzer & Co. has a “stellar” rating, which is the highest rating a pollster can receive. They actually display a tiny yet unsubstantial Democratic tilt on our pollster bias measurement, which compares a pollster’s result to the average, and they have the highest degree of predictive value a pollster can have with barely any tilt on actual results. In other words, they not only predict the victor, but they pretty much nail the margin of victory.
Yet, the very next week, and after a good deal of blowback from the Braley camp and other Democrats, the paper brought in Boomberg to jointly conduct the poll. Unsurprisingly, the race was a much closer 1-point margin.
PPD’s 2014 Senate Map Predictions model currently rates the Iowa Senate race Leans Republican. Considering the endorsement is — well, frankly inconsequential — Ernst’s focus on those who actually over those who will never support her, was the right decision.
