Saturday Endorsement Watch

Obama continues to pile up the editorial endorsements. Here's the Miami Herald. But McCain, also in that key swing state, gains the Tampa Tribune, plus the Dallas Morning News. See posts below for previous and links.

Obama now leads McCain by about 59-17, which is interesting in that Kerry barely edged Bush 213-205 in our count and before that the GOP candidate always won that race.

Yesterday the dam broke with former Bush-backing Denver Post and Chicago Tribune joining a wide Red State cross-section including the Kansas City Star and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

UPDATE: More Surprises in Obama Endorsements

It could not quite top the Chicago Tribune for drama, but it was a bombshell anyway tonight when the Denver Post -- under MediaNews' GOP-leaning Dean Singleton -- came out for Obama. It had backed Bush in 2004 (though Gore in 2000). It's as if a dam broke yesterday with the Washington Post endorsement and now many of the major papers have come out with their backings for Obama, early on the Web well before landing in print. And Colorado, of course, is a key swing state.

UPDATE: Now the Chicago Sun-Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Kerry backers in 2004)--and The Salt Lake Tribune, which backed Bush, have also endorsed Obama. He now leads McCain 56-16 in newspaper backing. The Salt Lake paper said McCain lost them when he picked the utterly unqualified Palin (they wanted him to name the Mormon, Romney). Thanks to Campbell Brown on CNN for the shout-out for our exclusive tabulations. Check out our running list, updated Friday, here. -- Greg Mitchell