Endorsements are one of the ways voters learn who candidates are and what they stand for. They can be particularly useful for voters in two types of elections: in partisan primaries, when voters may find it difficult to discern differences between candidates with the same party affiliation, and in nonpartisan local elections, when party labels don't appear on the ballot and little other information is available about each candidate. A number of both types of elections took place on Aug. 4.
Ballotpedia tracks endorsements from organizations we call Recognized Endorsement Contributors (RECs): groups including from political action committees, local associations, unions, media editorial boards, and more that publicly support candidates and communicate those choices to voters. In the Aug. 4 statewide elections, we tracked 2,842 endorsements from 566 RECs across five states: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington. These included 917 endorsements of candidates in local races.
