“Endorsed candidates suffered worse electoral outcomes than those not receiving an endorsement — even in Senate races where endorsements led to increases in turnout,” the researchers write. “Candidates who received a presidential endorsement were less likely to win than those who did not.”
Trump’s endorsements may “have done little to elicit engagement from voters on the Republican side, all the while creating a rallying effect around opposing candidates and increasing engagement among Democratic voters,” they conclude. “The story then from these findings is that presidential endorsements in 2018 indicated presidential backlash rather than presidential coattails.”
Those Republicans who performed well on election night in 2018 “did so in spite of and not because of a presidential endorsement from an unpopular president,” they write.
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