By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College
During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and perhaps while you watched the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, you were probably treated to a series of pundits trying to tell you which were the best conventions, and worst ones, according to what people think, or based on the election outcome, or something nebulous like the “eye test.”
There’s a better to figure out what worked or not. Let the most important audience judge the performance. And that would be the voters, and what they told public opinion firms. We’ll see which candidates pulled off the best shows since the late 1960s.
This is judged based on data from the 538.com compilations of polls. In addition to aggregating the data, the site also looks at what happens the week after; we don’t get just the one-day afterglow of a happy Friday, confounding the results.
Yes, The Worse Convention Was The Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968
There’s no way around it. When progressive protesters ran into Richard Daley’s cops, it was a bad look. But then you also had the specter of a forced vote on Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, shunting aside Eugene McCarthy. As a result, the Democrats were the only party since 1968 to have a negative bounce of two percentage points. Humphrey never seemed to recover.
But Bill Clinton Pulled Off A Slick Convention In 1992
The strongest bounce ever occurred when Bill Clinton was nominated at the 1992 convention. But some of that jump in the polls coincided with independent candidate H. Ross Perot dropping out, which inflated the Arkansas Governor’s lead to an eight-point bounce. He also had a top-ten convention in boost in 1996, making him the best candidate from a convention since the late 1960s.
The Best Conventions Don’t Always Have The Best Presidential Speakers
The number two best presidential candidate at a convention will shock you. It’s George H. W. Bush, the elder. He had a five-point bounce in 1992, even though most pundits will tell you the 1992 Houston GOP Convention was one of the worst in history. Bush Sr. is also tied with the number four spot for bounces, with a four-point increase after the 1988 GOP Convention in New Orleans.
Number three is Richard Nixon with two convention bounces in the top ten (1968 and 1972). Number four is Jimmy Carter, with the second largest jump, in 1976, though 1980 wasn’t so successful, in post-convention polls or the Fall election.
That might shock you. You might have thought that Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama, acclaimed orators, would be among the top. But neither had a top ten convention bounce over their combined four conventions. All four conventions with these candidates had no more than a one-point push in the polls.
But Michael Dukakis, Gerald Ford, Al Gore, and Bob Dole, all seen as “boring,” had a top ten convention bounce. Keep in mind that a bounce may be more than just how scintillating a speaker is. Bounces could be about making a great vice-presidential pick or providing more party unity, or missteps by one’s opponent.
So if Trump or Harris doesn’t get much of a bounce, or less of one than their opponent, just remember that there’s a lot of politics left to go in the election, as Dukakis, Ford, Gore, Dole, and Bush (1992) all went down to defeat. Similarly, Obama and Reagan won their races with very little traction in survey changes after their conventions. All would do well to adopt the Yogi Berra quote “It ain’t over, ‘til it’s over.”
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.
