I don’t agree with Jonathan Bernstein that it doesn’t matter whether the Republicans choose to hold their 2016 convention in Dallas or Cleveland, and that the locations of conventions have no potential impact on political outcomes. The most disastrous modern convention was held in Houston, Texas in 1992. Pat Buchanan’s infamous Culture War speech, delivered to a bunch of front-row whooping Stetson hats, was terrifying to this Jersey Boy. I ran away from that scene and never once again remotely considered supporting a Republican, even for dog catcher. If the conventions are mainly infomercials, then it matters what you’re selling and how you to try to sell it. Would Buchanan’s speech have been as threatening if he’d delivered it in Boston in front of the Massachusetts delegates? The answer is, “Hell no.”
But it isn’t just the overarching message the location sends. It’s the Electoral College, too. In any state that could potentially go either way, every single little thing matters. The Democrats used their conventions in Colorado and North Carolina to organize those states and improve their ground games. In the end, the Democrats carried Colorado narrowly in 2008 and lost North Carolina narrowly in 2012. But, in both cases, the Democrats improved their chances by holding the conventions in contestable states.
The only reason for the Republicans to prefer Dallas to Cleveland is because they’ll have bester access to big money donors in Dallas. Every other factor I can think of argues in favor of holding their convention in Cleveland. Ohio is a state that the GOP won as recently as 2004. They must win it to have any realistic chance of taking the presidency. It borders other states like Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that the Republicans need to win or put in play.
And just as a northern party has often chosen a southern candidate or running mate to compensate for regional weakness, the GOP needs to compensate for their regional isolation in the South. They don’t need candidates with a southern drawl, and they don’t need to be holding their convention in the Deep South.
The choice of convention site is not likely to be decisive, but it could be. In fact, the Republicans can probably only win the Electoral College, if at all, with the slightest of margins. George W. Bush would have lost in 2000 if he hadn’t been awarded Florida, and in 2004 if he hadn’t won Ohio. They can’t afford to give away any potentially winnable states.
Again, the advantage of holding a convention in a particular state is your heightened ability to organize in that state. But you also get saturation coverage for your message on the local level. Do your convention right, and you’ll get a bump that hard work can make stick.
If I were paid to give the Democrats (or Republicans) advice on where to put their next political convention, I’d always tell them to put it either in the state they just lost by the narrowest margin or the state that they just won by the narrowest margin. On a percentage basis, that would be North Carolina or Florida. After those come Georgia and Ohio.
