party conventions

• Party conventions

  3-4 day conventions in which delegates vote for their party
• Formal functions

  • Choosing the President candidate
  • Choosing the VP candidate
  • Deciding on the party platform - party’s policies
• Informal functions

  • Creates party unity
  • Excites the party faithful
  • Excites ordinary voters
  • Party bounce
• Advantage - important role in choosing the presidential and vice presidential candidate
• Advantage - decides on party platform

  • 2012 - Republicans’ party platform on abortion was right to life
• Advantage - creates party unity, only time the party meets as a whole

  • Primaries can turn into fierce personal battles so this ensures internal party wounds are healed before the general election
  • 2008 - bitter personal rivalry between Obama and Clinton, she suggested he was inexperienced yet at the convention both Clintons endorsed him
• Advantage - excites the party faithful

  • Ideal opportunity to enthuse through speeches and appearances of party's past champions and heroes
  • 2012 - the speech by Bill Clinton had the audience on their feet and it clearly excited the faithful to fight for Obama's re election
• Advantage - excites ordinary voters into voting for their candidate

  • Publicised through the TV
  • Candidate delivers acceptance speech 
  • Voters pay little attention to their point so first impressions are important especially if running for the first time like Bush in 2000 or Trump in 2016
• Advantage - leads to party bounce

  • 2016 - Clinton 2%, Trump 3%
  • 1992 - Clinton 16%
• Disadvantage - realistically the candidate is decided at primaries
• Disadvantage - party platform agreed in the platform committee

  • Holds hearings in the first 6 months of election year
  • 2008 - Democrats held more than 1,600 listening sessions in communities across all states, in which nearly 30,000 people participated
  • Republicans invited visitors to their website to share your thoughts, participate in polls and communicate directly with policy makers
• Disadvantage - unity not always created

  • 2008 Congressman Paul who had sig support in Republican primaries and caucuses refused to endorse McCain
• Disadvantage - decreasing of importance recently

  • Evident in the decreasing of TV coverage
  • 1968 ABC, CBS, NBC put out 46 hours of the years republican convention, but just 9 hours in 2012
  • 2008 ABC news poll asking voters how important the conventions were to helping them decide their vote found that 71% found them less important
• Disadvantage - party bounce very minimal in recent years when compared with 1992’s 16% by Clinton