National Party Conventions Research Articles

State Parties, the Democratic National Convention, and Civil Rights Liberalism

Abstract What explains variation in how committed postwar Democrats were to civil rights? I use evidence from state delegation behavior at national party conventions to assess this. I examine two types of issues: challenges to the credentials of all-white southern delegations and efforts to change the platform language on civil rights issues. While the latter is widely known, the former are more obscure but, I argue, important indicators of how strongly committed some state delegations were to civil rights. I use archival materials to trace the story of how these issues came onto the party committee’s agenda in the first place and then assess the correlates of state delegation voting behavior. In 1948, the strongest predictor of being willing to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation was the increase in Black population percentage in a state. More states, however, were willing to strengthen the civil rights platform language, and here state population size was the strongest predictor. These results, though, obscure important variation, with a number of relatively smaller, whiter states in the upper Midwest playing a key role. Taken together, these findings elucidate variation in the civil rights preferences of non-southern Democrats, shed new light on debates about the civil rights realignment, and demonstrate the potential of using state delegation voting behavior as evidence.

The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest ed. by Jon K. Lauck and Catherine McNicol Stock

Reviewed by: The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest ed. by Jon K. Lauck and Catherine McNicol Stock Linda Van Ingen Jon K. Lauck and Catherine McNicol Stock, eds., The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020. 390 pp. $29.95 (paper). The Conservative Heartland is an ambitious effort to elevate the political significance of midwestern conservatism and revive the historiography of the region with its complicated political landscape. Seventeen essays range from studies of the anti-statist conservatism that emerged following World War II to the impact of religion on politics, the political fallout of economic and demographic dislocations, and the tumultuous politics of race and gender. The need to define both "Midwest" and "conservatism" complicates this effort, and the editors accordingly allow for a broad definition of each. "Conservatism" is a response to New Deal liberalism, and the Midwest is a region of twelve contiguous states (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota) from which scholars can further define the parameters of their respective studies. In a comprehensive introduction, Jon Lauck and Catherine McNicol Stock summarize each essay while also offering an overview of midwestern conservatism that challenges the conventional assumption of a so–called liberal "blue wall" that was supposed to hold for Democrats in 2016. Political strategists, blindsided by Donald Trump's wins in Michigan and Wisconsin, failed to recognize the political volatility of the region. This [End Page 101] book addresses that problem, underscoring the Midwest's competitiveness. Although expanding the scholarship on the breadth and depth of the region's conservatism through their individual essays, the featured authors collectively agree that the Midwest is a political battleground that should not be assumed. The first three articles take different approaches to explore the region's competitiveness. Michael Barone's historical analysis identifies three "heritage factors" (the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and founding of the Republican Party in 1854, and labor strikes in the late 1930s) that shape political alignments and cultural attitudes of midwestern voters. Kyle Kondik applies a statistical analysis of presidential deviation in voting from 1976 to 2016 to reveal a political volatility in the region. Daniel Birdsong and Christopher Devine argue that although the Midwest lost much of what made it historically significant in presidential politics (including the size of its electorate, being home to presidential candidates, and hosting national party conventions) it is still a political battleground when measured in terms of media attention, campaign activity, and a "battleground score" calculated to measure electoral competitiveness. All three articles support the book's overall thesis that the Midwest is politically competitive because of significant variations over time and place. Authors of the remaining essays generally agree that midwestern conservatism grew with deep social and fiscal shifts that help explain Trump's appeal in 2016. For example, A. James Fuller explores how Indiana's Mitch Daniels, governor from 2005 to 2013, pursued a fiscally conservative pragmatism emulated by subsequent governors including future vice president Mike Pence. Daniels privatized many government services including toll roads and state prisons. Demands for more prisons were central to Ian Toller-Clark's racial analysis of Wisconsin's working class following decades of liberal criminal justice reform, a development he calls "carceral populism" with wide appeal to conservative voters. Most striking is Catherine McNicol Stock's analysis of how private investment in North Dakota's public sphere influenced public policy. She details the history of how a wealthy benefactor built an ice hockey arena at the University of North Dakota in the 1990s and subsequently wielded control over many university decisions. Stock connects this example to the state's largely unregulated fracking industry and the power of corporate investment over public policy, including environmental concerns and Indigenous rights. Although Stock does not overtly make the claim, it is not hard to connect her work on the "new" [End Page 102] North Dakota with its pro-business agenda to the state's support of Trump in 2016. Several essays address the impact of feminist and gender issues on midwestern conservatism. Ann Marie Wambeke explores...

Anti-Jacksonian democratization: the first national political party conventions

ABSTRACT Utilizing newspapers and manuscripts to examine the first conventions, this article further challenges the association of Jacksonianism with increasing democratization. The rise of democratization evident through the increased political engagement apparent in the conventions was not purely Jacksonian, instead manifesting itself in anti-Jacksonian political activity. The Anti-Masonic Party was first to hold a national convention, with the Democrats holding their convention last, following that of the National Republican Party, and simply nominating Martin Van Buren as Andrew Jackson’s running-mate. The advent of the Anti-Masonic and National Republican conventions demonstrate the existence of anti-Jacksonian democratization.

Rocking the delegate rolls at the national party conventions in 2016

Rocking the delegate rolls at the national party conventions in 2016

Deconstructing naturalization ceremonies as public spectacles of citizenship

ABSTRACTNaturalizations, unlike inaugurations and national party conventions, are one of the few daily repeated political theatre experiences, replete with monologs, dialogues, costumes, props, actors, stage managers, plural audiences, and staged practices. They serve as a public ritual to render foreigners into members. In so doing, they generate a citizen identity, reinforce the power of the state and confirm a relationship between new citizens, current citizens, and the state. In this article, through an interpretive process including participant-observation and grounded theory approaches, I question the presence, interaction, and roles of the multiple publics (immigrants, observers, civil servants, judges and non-governmental groups) in a naturalization ceremony. I present field notes and reflections from a ‘typical’ US naturalization ceremony. I deconstruct the choreography and structure of the public ritual to show what the public performance of naturalization tells us about what it means to be an American citizen. I explore what messages the state is trying to convey to naturalizing immigrants (and others) through the ritual of the naturalization ceremony. The locus of inquiry is New York City where 70,000 of the 680,000 naturalizations take place every year.

News Coverage of the 2016 National Conventions: Negative News, Lacking Context

Live television coverage of the national party conventions gives the nominees the opportunity to present themselves unmediated and at length to the American people. There’s no moment in the presidential campaign when the candidates so fully control the message as during the party conventions. Yet the live coverage is not the only version of the party conventions. Americans are also exposed to a secondhand rendition, one that is highly mediated. It’s the news media’s version of the convention, where the prevailing voices are not those of the nominees but instead those of reporters. Figure 1 shows just how true that was of the 2016 convention period. On television and in the newspapers, journalists were the voice behind roughly seven out of every ten news reports about the candidates. The nominees were heard speaking for themselves in less than one in ten reports.

Unconventional protests: Partisans and independents outside the Republican and Democratic national conventions

Protests at national party conventions are an important setting in which political parties and social movements challenge one another. This article examines the motivations of participants in these events. Drawing upon data from surveys of protesters outside the 2008 national party conventions, it focuses on how partisan and independent political identifications correspond with the reasons that individuals give for protesting. The results demonstrate that there are some conditions under which independents place a greater focus on issues than do partisans and under which partisans place a greater focus on presidential candidates than do independents. However, there are also conditions under which independents are inclined to work alongside partisans, such as trying to stop the election of a threatening candidate and in championing an issue outside their opposing party’s convention. The article argues that micro-level partisan identifications are thus likely to affect the broader structure of party coalitions. These considerations promise to become increasingly relevant as social movements – such as the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter – launch new campaigns against or within established parties.

Caucus Reform? Primary Reform? Delegate Reform? Lessons from the 2016 Political Party Presidential Nominating Process: A 50-State Review of the Legal and Political Mechanisms Deployed by the Republican Party for Selecting Delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention

Caucus Reform? Primary Reform? Delegate Reform? Lessons from the 2016 Political Party Presidential Nominating Process: A 50-State Review of the Legal and Political Mechanisms Deployed by the Republican Party for Selecting Delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention

Invoking “The Family” to Legitimize Gender- and Sexuality-Based Public Policies in the United States: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2012 Democratic and Republican National Party Conventions

Women and sexual minorities in the United States continue to experience subordinate status, and the policy gains they have made in areas such as reproductive rights and marriage equality continue to be challenged in political discourse. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of texts from the 2012 Democratic and Republican national conventions in order to examine the extent to which ideological representations of the family were employed to legitimize public policy positions related to gender (e.g., abortion) and sexuality (e.g., same-sex marriage). We analyzed two forms of text (official party platform document, transcripts of speeches) with distinct intended audiences (i.e., party members, general audience). Findings revealed that an ideological representation of the traditional family ideal—featuring a heterosexual couple, their children, and asymmetric gender relations—was present within speeches given by both parties, particularly by the spouses of the presidential candidates (Michelle Obama and Ann Romney). Although this ideological representation was subsequently used within the Republican Party platform to legitimize positions against same-sex marriage and abortion, the Democratic Party platform challenged this representation of the family to instead advocate for policy positions in favor of same-sex marriage and women’s reproductive rights. We discuss this ambivalence within Democratic texts in light of the different audiences that party convention texts seek. Implications for gender- and sexuality-based policies are discussed, as well as the importance of examining political discourse across diverse forms and settings.

Voter Turnout in Presidential Nominating Contests

AbstractPresidential elections are conducted in two stages. The November general election is proceeded by a series of contests where delegates are selected to national party conventions, which is where the parties select their candidates for the fall election. These nominating contests’ political environments vary: the rules regarding who can participate; the levels of electoral competition, which are related to when they are held; and that other offices present on the ballot, if any. We explore the effects of these conditions on voter participation in recent presidential contests and generally find turnout highest in competitive and inclusive contests where other offices are on the ballot. Examining the 2008 American National Election Panel Study, we find primary voters are more ideologically extreme than general election voters, but there is little difference between voters in closed and open primary states. We suggest primary type has little effect on the ideological composition of the electorate because modern nomination contests are low turnout elections that draw only the most politically interested.

An Applied Learning Experience Field Research and Reporting at the 2012 National Party Conventions

Scholarship in teaching and learning demonstrates how academic understanding may be best achieved, and values of civic engagement best inculcated, when class materials are delivered within a experiential context. The goal for instructors, therefore, is to develop pedagogic techniques and teaching platforms that enhance learning by doing by directly engaging students with educational content. Courses that focus on American political processes provide especially fruitful opportunities for such applied learning experiences. In this paper, we discuss and assess experiential learning as facilitated in a pair of undergraduate courses taught at a southern state university that focused on the study of American politics at national party conventions. As a primary requirement in “Political Party Conventions Field Study” and “Reporting at the Party Conventions,” political science and communication students, and four supervising faculty, traveled to the 2012 Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention where they produced political research using field observation and survey methodologies and professional-style news reporting. Survey data collected before and after the convention indicate that students engaged in such experiential learning projects develop a more substantive understanding of the subject matter under study, enhanced motivation for learning, and greater feelings of academic achievement and citizenship.

Cable News, Public Opinion, and the 2004 Party Conventions

In this study, the authors test for the presence of bias during Fox News and CNN’s coverage of the 2004 national party conventions. The content analysis demonstrates that Fox News’s coverage was more favorable to the Republican Party than it was to the Democratic Party, while CNN’s coverage was more impartial. The authors also use panel data from the National Annenberg Election Survey to show how opinion change toward the 2004 presidential candidates was associated with exposure to cable television coverage of the national party conventions. These findings highlight the evolving role of the cable news media in presidential campaigns and elections.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Audience Attitude Change During the 2004 Party Conventions

The intention of this analysis is to examine The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s coverage of politics and assess the persuasive power of the program’s unique brand of humor. Evidence from a content analysis of The Daily Show’s “Indecision 2004” coverage of the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions shows the program’s humor was much harsher during the Republican Convention than it was during the Democratic Convention. While the humor in both conventions was heavily based on self-deprecation and the exploitation of conventional political stereotypes, the ridicule of Republicans focused much more on policy and character flaws. Humor pointed toward Democrats, on the other hand, tended to focus more on innocuous physical attributes. Analysis of panel data collected by the National Annenberg Election Survey during the 2004 national party conventions shows that exposure to The Daily Show’s convention coverage was associated with increased negativity toward President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. These relationships remain significant even when controlling for partisan identification and ideology. Attitudes toward the Democratic ticket, John Kerry and John Edwards remained consistent.

State Party Context and Norms among Delegates to the 2000 National Party Conventions

AbstractPolitical scientists have increasingly viewed party activists as important catalysts for party behavior and change in American politics. Understanding the decisionmaking norms of these activists should help inform scholars' broader understanding of party performance. We examine the norms of party decisionmaking expressed by a select group of party activists: delegates to both parties' 2000 national conventions. We focus on how state contextual factors shape the norms these activists hold regarding the proper balance between ideological purity and the pragmatic pursuit of electoral success. The contextual factors we consider include the rules for delegate selection, the financial capacity of state parties, electoral competitiveness between the two parties, party polarization, and state political culture. We find evidence that norms respond as expected to some elements of state party context, but not to others.

When Have Presidential Campaigns Decided Election Outcomes?

How often and when have fall presidential general election campaigns during the past 50 years been decisive in determining which presidential candidate would receive the plurality of the national popular vote? This article addresses these questions using data from the Gallup Poll, the National Election Studies, and actual election returns for the 14 presidential elections from 1948 to 2000. Based on an analysis of four measures of net effects of general election campaigns from after the national party conventions until election day, there is some evidence of campaigns being decisive in 5 of the 14 elections examined. Campaigns after the conventions were probably decisive in two elections, the 1948 and 1960 contests, and possibly made the difference in the outcomes of the 1976, 1980, and 2000 elections. A conservative estimate is that campaigns conducted after the conventions have probably been decisive in about a quarter of presidential elections since 1948.

Do Conventions Matter? Choosing National Party Leaders in Canada

Do Conventions Matter? provides a complete overview of national party conventions in Canada, from 1919, when the first convention was held, to 1993, including the selection of Stanfield, Trudeau, Broadbent, Clark, Mulroney, Turner, McLaughlin, Chretien, Campbell, and Manning. Courtney compares leadership selection practices in Canada with those in the United States, Britain, and Australia, and shows that Canadian conventions remain a distinctive means of choosing party leaders. Focusing on modern developments in the convention process, Courtney highlights changes in representation over the last thirty years, addresses criticisms about costs and delegate selection practices, and examines the role of the media. He concludes with an examination of the future of conventions in the context of Canadian democracy, given sky-rocketing costs, the movement to reform political parties, and the push towards a universal membership vote. He argues convincingly that the objectives of greater representation and greater democracy explain both the emergence of conventions to choose the leaders of federal parties and their possible demise in the near future.

The Crosswinds of Change: Sources of Change in the Democratic and Republican Parties

This paper disaggregates change among Democratic and Republican elites in the 1980s. Using data about the views of delegates to the 1980, 1984 and 1988 national party conventions, I examine the relative contributions of conversion and replacement coupled with the preference for candidates among party activists. The analysis of the effects of preferences for candi dates and the ideological positions of the delegates revealed that regardless of whether the activists are veterans or newcomers, support for particular candidates plays an important role in the shaping of the parties' aggregate ideological orientation.

Are ?superdelegates? super?

Post-1968 changes in the Democratic party's nomination process resulted, by some accounts, in the selection of delegates who knew little about politics, cared little about winning, and were removed from the party following. One remedy for this situation was the reintroduction of party professionals into the process in the form of “superdelegates.” Did this cure work? By examining the accuracy of superdelegates' perceptions of the party following's positions on issues compared with those of ordinary delegates, this paper addresses part of this question. Using data about the views of delegates to the 1988 national party conventions and the 1988 American National Election Study, I show that the fears about postreform delegates being more out of touch with the party following than “professionals” (i.e., superdelegates) are largely overstated.

The Mass Media and Public Opinion Polls in the 1988 Presidential Election

The authors examine the results of 48 national public opinion polls measuring support for George Bush and Michael Dukakis throughout the 1988 presidential campaign conducted or reported by five major media polling organizations. Polling trends are discussed, and the consistency of estimates across polls are assessed, across seven distinct time periods defined by key events during the 1988 election year, while accuracy is assessed by comparing final pre-election polls against election results. Time series transfer function methods are employed to assess the short-term and long-term effects of the two major national party conventions, the two Bush-Dukakis debates, and the Ouayle-Bentsen debate on candidate support. Statistically significant positive effects on Bush support are obtained for the Republican convention and for the second presidential debate, while support for Dukakis was affected significantly, and in opposite directions, by the two party conventions. The results are discussed in the context of recent research conducted by Crespi and others.

Measuring the Consequences of Delegate Selection Rules in Presidential Nominations

In this paper, we formalize existing normative criteria used to judge presidential selection contests by modeling the translation of citizen votes in primaries and caucuses into delegates to the national party conventions. We use a statistical model that enables us to separate the form of electoral responsiveness in presidential selection systems, as well as the degree of bias toward each of the candidates. We find that (1) the Republican nomination system is more responsive to changes in citizen votes than the Democratic system; (2) non-PR primaries are always more responsive than PR primaries; (3) surprisingly, caucuses are more proportional than even primaries held under PR rules; (4) significant bias in favor of a candidate was a good prediction of the winner of the nomination contest. We also (5) evaluate the claims of Ronald Reagan in 1976 and Jesse Jackson in 1988 that the selection systems were substantially biased against their candidates. We find no evidence to support Reagan's claim, but substa...