Can Obama Take Advantage of Coming Last?

Here we sit in the interval between the two conventions (as I write this Tuesday), with no sign of a significant change in the horse-race positioning -- yet. There may have been subtle changes in aspects of the campaign that we will pick up in additional polling -- say in the images of the two candidates, or in the images of the two parties. But in terms of moving the numbers on the "who will you vote for" question, we just didn't see it. And we know from history that this is unusual. We usually do see a change in the horse race after the conventions.

Here are two broad explanations for the lack of a bounce.

One involves an external attribution of cause -- the idea that the structure of American politics has changed to the point where voters are already stuck in place by the time the conventions come around, with little room for movement. This goes along with the fact that political conventions are increasingly meaningless in terms of any official function. Furthering this explanation is the fact that this year Mitt Romney chose his vice presidential running mate well before the convention. That marked a difference from 2008, when John McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin just days before the convention -- heightening the public's interest in the convention in which the unknown Palin made her first national public speech. No such suspense waiting for Paul Ryan's speech -- he was interviewed and out on the trail for a couple of weeks before his speech last Wednesday night.

The second explanation for the lack of a GOP bounce involves internal attribution of cause -- the idea that the GOP got no bounce because they simply failed to change anyone's minds. This would involve the hypothesis that the Republicans simply didn't have a strong convention.

Any way you look at it, as my colleague Jeff Jones notes, it's not optimal for the Romney campaign to have received no uptick in the vote as a result of the convention. Presumably the best they would hope for now would be a similar "no bounce" out of the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. If Barack Obama does get a bounce and sustains it, then it may signal a resetting of the election in his favor.

Lots of discussion about what the Democrats intend to do at Charlotte. Although there has always been a question about the value of a primacy effect (coming first) in debate and conventions versus arecency effect (coming last), there is no question that coming last this year allows Obama's campaign to be able to carefully review what the Republicans did at their convention and thus position themselves against it.

Two themes reinforced by the Republicans were a general animosity toward the role of federal government in the nation's social and economic affairs, and the value of the role of the traditional family.

The role of government is the central political question of our time. The Republicans made it clear that they view government as an entity to be used sparingly, with more emphasis on individuals and individual achievement unfettered by government. Obama will almost certainly not revisit his "you didn't build it" comment in Charlotte, but the idea behind that statement -- the value of pooled, collective resources channeled through our government to enhance the public good -- will certainly come through during the convention. How effectively the Democrats and Obama can make the case for the value of a significant role of government in redistributing resources and curbing individual/corporate excesses will be a key to the ultimate success of their convention.

Mitt Romney, his wife Ann, and other Republican speakers last week generally extolled the virtues of traditional marriage as the central building block of a well-functioning society. Obama and the Democrats are not as likely to continue down that path, but rather will spend more time emphasizing positive views toward those who are not married, those who want to be married in unconventional ways, and those who are living life in ways that would not be defined as "traditional" in general. Republicans value structure and normative patterns that define things as right and wrong; Democrats are more likely to want to avoid assumptions that some ways of arranging things are better than others and to be accepting of patterns that deviate from tradition. We saw Ann Romney talking about the value of family and traditional marriage and structure. We probably will hear Michelle Obama talking about other issues.

These divergent emphases on traditional marriage fit with the data. Our latest demographic analysis, based on data collected Aug. 13-Sept. 2, shows that married Americans prefer Romney over Obama by a whopping 56% to 37% margin. Americans who are not married prefer Obama over Romney by 58% to 34%. Marriage, in short, is one of the major defining variables of our contemporary political and partisan structure today.

Also, the Republican Convention targeted women, a Romney weakness and an Obama strength. The latest Gallup data show that women are voting for Obama over Romney by a 50% to 43% margin. Men are going for Romney by 51% to 42%. If Obama followed the same pattern as did Romney (i.e., targeting the gender group among whom he does less well), he would target men at his convention.