Do Endorsements Matter? Not in Hancock’s First Election.

Politicians and campaigns spend a lot of time acquiring endorsements, especially from rivals, but it’s not clear it makes much of a difference.

When Mayor Michael Hancock was first elected in 2011, third-place close finisher, James Mejia, endorsed topliner Chris Romer. Yet, in the runoff, Hancock beat Romer by 16 percentage points, or nearly 20,000 votes, a major reversal of the first election position. There was also an increase of 8,000 additional votes in the total.