Why Teachers' Union Endorsements Tilt Local School Board Races

🔍 How Voter Reactions Were Measured

Analysis tests how providing local teachers' union endorsement information affects voter support for school board candidates and then compares that effect to other familiar drivers of vote choice. The study also examines real-world endorsement decisions by unions to understand the motives behind support.

📊 What Was Found

• Providing voters with teachers' union endorsements increases candidate support; while the size of the effect varies across ideological and partisan subgroups, endorsements rarely harm a candidate's prospects.
• The size of the "teachers' union premium" can be as large as the effect of shared partisanship and is substantially larger than the boost from endorsements by other stakeholders.
• In actual endorsement decisions, unions' support for incumbents is tied to self-interested pecuniary considerations and shows no relationship to incumbents' success in improving student academic outcomes.

🧭 Data and Design

• The approach combines tests of voter responses to endorsement information with benchmarking exercises that compare the endorsement effect to other determinants of vote choice, and an observational analysis of real-world union endorsement choices.

⚖️ Why It Matters

The divergence between what endorsements signal (organizational priorities and incentives) and how voters interpret them (as a cue boosting candidate support) raises important normative concerns about democratic accountability and the informational role of endorsements in local elections.