Over the past fifty years, we have seen a massive change in how political conventions are structured. A large part of the change is the result of the ever-changing rules for delegate selection. If you look back at, for example 1976, a large number of delegates came from states that did not have binding preference votes. And, even in the states with binding preference votes, uncommitted still got a decent number of votes.
While by the time of the conventions, the party had generally reached a consensus about the nominee. the structure of these conventions mostly tracked the fact that the convention would decide the presidential nominee. As such, each of the four days was ultimately about party business. Monday was about organizing the convention. The main business was the credentials and rules reports that, upon adoption, would allow the convention to get its business started. The highlight of the evening was the keynote speech that set forth the party’s view of the nation and its issues. Tuesday was about the party platform. Typically, that evening would see a series of speeches from party leaders about the key “planks” of the platform. Wednesday was about picking the party’s presidential nominee — nomination speeches and the roll call. Finally, on Thursday, the party would pick the vice-presidential nominee (again nomination speeches and the roll call) followed by acceptance speeches from the vice-presidential and presidential nominee.
The fact that the nominee is now determined entirely by the result of the primaries has changed the structure. Today, rather than party business defining each night, party’s tend to have “themes” for each night. With platform fights all but a thing of the past, we have moved the presidential nomination to Tuesday night and the Vice-Presidential nomination to Wednesday night so that we can have the VP nominee accept on Wednesday night. (One benefit of this change is the end of the risk that the process of choosing the VP could bump the Presidential candidate out of prime time on Thursday).
Ultimately, the big change — made even more so by this year’s virtual conventions — is that conventions have moved from being business meetings were decisions had to be made to extended commercials for the parties. And that change has been reflected to some degree in how networks have covered the conventions. The conventions used to be news events with things happening on the floor and in back rooms. (I remember the 1980 Republican convention where rumors were swirling around about negotiations between Reagan and Ford for Ford to become the VP nominee — as sort of a co-president — before Reagan eventually went with George H.W. Bush.) Today, there is little news at the convention. So rather than paying attention to everything happening at the convention, the networks get to switch between the speakers that they find interesting and the talking heads discussing the election and their interpretation of the message that the party is trying to give (while not showing the actual message). The big speeches still get coverage, but the other speeches may or may not get shown.
These changes to the role and format of the conventions (and the resulting changes to the news coverage) have also impacted viewership of the conventions. And as conventions have become less “must see” events for all but political junkies, their impact on the election has also dwindled. In the past, a good convention might produce a significant “bounce” in the polls. While that bounce would decline over time, there were certainly elections (1988 and 1992 for example) in which the post-convention polling around Labor Day showed a significant swing from the July 4 polling data.
When this election is over, the parties will need to take a look at the lessons from this year’s conventions. Whether we will go back to large in-person conventions in the future remains to be determined, but one thing should be clear: today’s conventions are very different than past conventions.
