The two political parties hold conventions to nominate their Presidential candidate. These are huge affairs requiring large blocks of hotel space and a venue, usually something the size of a Basketball stadium. That all requires a lot of advance planning and therefore a commitment to a date.
Presumably there is an advantage to either going first or second. It may be that first impressions matter the most and so going first is desirable. Or it may be that people remember the most recent convention more vividly so that going second is better. Whichever it is, the incumbent party has an advantage in the convention timing game.
The incumbent party already has a nominee. The convention doesn’t accomplish anything formal and is really just an opportunity to advertise its candidate and platform. The challenger, by contrast, has to hold the convention in order to formally nominate its candidate. This is not just to make formal what has usually been decided much earlier in the primaries. Federal law releases the candidate from using some campaign money only after he is formally nominated.
So the incumbent has the freedom to wait as long as necessary for the challenger to commit to a date and then immediately respond by scheduling its own convention either directly before or directly after the challenger’s, depending on which is more desirable. The fact that this year the Democractic National Convention followed immediately on the heel’s of the Republican’s suggests that going last is better.
I haven’t seen the data but this theory makes the following prediction. In every election with an incumbent candidate the incumbent party’s convention is either always before or always after the challenger’s. And in elections with no incumbent, the sequencing is unpredictable just on the basis of party.
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September 25, 2012 at 12:49 am
Enrique
“In every election with an incumbent candidate the incumbent party’s convention is either always before or always after the challenger’s.”
The above statement is not falsifiable.
September 25, 2012 at 4:10 am
jeff
Note the order of modifiers: either *always* before or *always* after. That’s not the same as always either before or after. The latter is not falsifiable in the strong sense that it is always true. But the former is falsified if you find two years and in ont the incumbent is before and in the second the incumbent is after.
September 26, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Enrique
I stand corrected. But (as per the other replies) isn’t the sequence of the conventions determined by an informal convention, or is such sequence “up for grabs,” so to speak?
September 25, 2012 at 2:22 am
Evan
From Nate Silver, en passant: “conventions are being held later and later, meaning that the incumbent-party candidate, who holds his convention last”
September 25, 2012 at 7:55 am
dan
the data-
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781449.html
from quick scan of recent ones, your theory is looking very good – nice!
Of course another advantage to moving second is ability to respond to first mover’s arguments
But I’m not clear on why challenger has to choose their date first. As you say, the nominee is decided much earlier, so that’s not relevant. And the campaign law issue would seem to apply to both challenger and incumbent. Maybe you’re implying incumbent is formally nominated beforehand, and challenger isn’t. But seems if incumbent could do this, challenger would/should too
September 25, 2012 at 8:35 am
Thierry
As a matter of fact, the party of the sitting President always goes last.
September 25, 2012 at 8:36 am
twicker
Here’s even more data (feel free to expand; I only went back to 1964):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtKyc8VvcF1XdFRnVXBubmtuQWEtVzFGS2RYTkV1R3c
Note that the challenger party goes second; i.e., even in years – well, depending on how you define it, “the year” – when there wasn’t an incumbent president (or vice-president) at the top of the incumbent party’s ticket, the challenger went first.
My guess is that the challenger needs more time to introduce him- or herself (so far himself, but that’s likely to change relatively soon, IMHO). The incumbent is a known quantity, and, thus, doesn’t need to do that; s/he can sit back and hope that the challenger missteps. Thus, there’s an unequal payoff for challengers v. incumbents: challengers benefit by going early (if they’re going to benefit at all – that last part’s crucial in my hypothesis), while incumbents benefit from having a later bounce (again, if they benefit at all).
Thus, the two are coordinated.
Now I’m wondering who announces convention dates first – challenger party or incumbent? That seems to be a critical element, though one would assume that *someone* always announces first, and everyone (so far, with a small-n problem here) has set dates that correspond to the challenger-party-first setup.
For 2012, it was the GOP (who announced their date in early 2010: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/03/2012-news-rnc-has-its-convention-date/36950/ ). I’ve set it so that anyone with the link can edit my Google spreadsheet; I need to do other things, so someone’s free to fill that in. 🙂
September 25, 2012 at 11:48 pm
Alex F
Jeff– the incumbent party also has to formally nominate a candidate. President Obama had to wait until after the conventions to use his “general election” campaign money, just like Romney did. So… that all seems pretty symmetric.
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