Politics

Will canceling the convention cost President Trump in Florida? History says it won’t

The history on political conventions delivering for campaigns in the state is not overwhelming. In fact in the last three presidential elections, a candidate has only carried the state that hosted the convention only a third of the time

In 2016, then-candidate Trump carried Ohio just four months after holding the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. At the same time Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania after hosting the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

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Four years earlier, President Obama lost North Carolina after hosting the Democratic convention in Charlotte and Mitt Romney lost Florida after hosting the Republican convention in Tampa.

Four years before that: then-candidate Obama won Colorado after hosting the convention in Denver, while John McCain lost Minnesota after hosting the convention in Saint Paul.

“You are going to put them in the states where you are having difficulty or where you think you’ll be having difficulty in four years when you plan these things out,” said UCF political science professor Dr. John Hanley.  “When a convention is in a town it can dominate the news and you have people who can go and be on television and deliver a unified message, but it’s not going to move one state out of the blue column and into the red column.”  

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Where there could be an impact is in what is known as the “convention bounce” the slight jump in the polls that a candidate traditionally receives after the convention.

With both the Republican and Democratic conventions basically going virtual this year, it’s hard to know if President Trump or Joe Biden will get any sort of bounce.

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“The usual convention bump that we talk about happens because the convention is able to concentrate the nation’s media it’s hard to say if that will occur this year,” said Hanley.