What makes VoteSmart.org unique? Only Vote Smart makes endorsements and ratings from interest groups across the country so easy to find! Vote Smart reports on performance evaluations from all special interest groups who provide them, regardless of issue or bias. And so far this year, Vote Smart has collected over 6,500 endorsements for 2018 elections! But what are these groups, and where do their endorsements come from? Find out below!
A public endorsement represents an interest group's official support for a candidate in an election. Interest groups such as the NRA, the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood Action Fund or the American Conservative Union, to name a few, announce official endorsements in the weeks leading up to an election.
Meanwhile, ratings represent an interest group's performance evaluation of a politician. Typically, these are based on voting records of legislators in office but can also be based on questionnaires sent to candidates. Here at Vote Smart, we convert all those ratings into a percentage to make them easier for you to understand. Then we collect those endorsements and ratings and make them easily accessible to you!
If you're interested in finding out who really supports your candidate, you don't have to look any further. Vote Smart follows national and state interest groups and collects all official endorsements that interest groups release. To check out which interest groups have released 2018 endorsements, check out our Interest Groups page at: https://votesmart.org/interest-groups.
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