Washington Post breaks tradition with no endorsement in 2024 presidential race

Despite a fiercely competitive race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, The Washington Post announced that it will abstain from endorsing a candidate, marking the first time in 36 years the paper has chosen neutrality in a presidential election.

The Washington Post published a report by two staff journalists disclosing that editorial page staffers had initially drafted an endorsement for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Republican nominee Donald Trump.

However, “the decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner - Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” the article stated, citing two sources familiar with the decision-making process.

“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” wrote Publisher Will Lewis in an opinion piece on The Washington Post’s website, referring to the paper’s pre-1976 approach. That year, in the wake of its groundbreaking Watergate reporting, the Post endorsed Democrat Jimmy Carter. A search of the archives shows that 1988 was the last time the paper withheld a general election endorsement.

Notably, The Post endorsed Donald Trump’s opponents in both 2016 and 2020, with strongly worded editorials favoring Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden.

This year’s decision not to endorse has left some colleagues “shocked” and predominantly critical. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, a vocal critic of Trump’s “autocratic” tendencies, told NPR he had resigned from the editorial board in response to the decision.