The Trump Bump(?) and Attempted Assassination Couture
Notes from Day 2 in Milwaukee
One of the things I’ve heard from a number of political observers across the spectrum is the idea that Trump is going to get large, if temporary, popularity bounces both from the assassination attempt and from the convention. Preliminary evidence on this is sketchy, at best, but the point I want to make is that a) there’s little reason to expect much of a bump from either cause, and b) if there is a bump, we won’t be able to distinguish one cause from another.
On the first point, I’m not really sure where people got the idea that assassination attempts were good for a candidacy. I mean, yes, it shows up in fiction — “Bob Roberts” got himself in office this way, and “The West Wing”’s Jed Bartlet got a post-shooting bounce that even he knew was going to be short-lived. And yes, Ronald Reagan saw his approval ratings go up after he was shot, although that didn’t help him for very long. But would-be assassins took shots at Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and even Teddy Roosevelt without boosting those people back to office. The idea that assassination attempts translate to electoral success has really been invented without evidence.
(Creepy aside: Teddy Roosevelt was shot outside the Gilpatrick Hotel which is in… downtown Milwaukee! It’s now a Hyatt just outside the secure zone and has this plaque in the entryway:)
Could Trump get a convention bounce? Unlike assassination attempt bounces, convention bounces are a thing. Traditionally, they’ve resulted from a pretty one-sided campaign environment that lasts for four days, allowing a party to shore up support for their nominee without a lot of pushback from the other side. Bill Clinton famously had a substantial convention bounce in 1992, and other nominees have gotten short-term bounces in the 5-10 percent range. But convention bounces have been declining in size over time as the electorate becomes more polarized, and especially in an era of candidates like Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who have both been a) presidents and b) household names since the 1980s. No one really got a bounce in 2020 and I see little reason to expect one in 2024.
But, if Trump were to somehow get a bounce in support at the end of this week, would it be because of the convention or because of the assassination attempt? Here’s my hot take: those two are indistinguishable. They’re indistinguishable not just because they occurred at roughly the same time, but also because the assassination attempt has been, intentionally or not, one of the core themes of this convention.
At least one delegate has been spotted wearing a piece of gauze over his right ear in sympathy with Trump. And there’s this guy dressed like Uncle Sam who I keep running into at convention events, and he was wearing gauze over his right ear yesterday. I’m not sure how big a thing this is but I think it counts as a thing.
I delegate I spoke to the other day told me that as of last week, coming to the convention felt like a formality, but since the assassination attempt, it felt like a mission. His words.
Only some of the convention speeches have explicitly brought it up, but Ben Carson probably did that the most explicitly last night, saying about Trump:
They tried to bankrupt him, and he’s got more money now than he had before. Then they tried to put him in prison, and he’s freer and has made other people free with him. Then, last weekend they tried to kill him, and there he is, over there, alive and well.
There’s obviously quite a bit of slippage in Carson’s definition of “they,” but it did seem to be part of the overall effort to capitalize on sympathy for Trump as a victim of violence and to generate outrage toward Democrats over it. J.D. Vance echoed similar themes last weekend when he blamed Joe Biden for using rhetoric that provoked violence.
I’ve been struck by Trump’s appearances at the convention so far, which historically is highly unusual. But I can’t help thinking that at least some of the reason for that is to show that he was wounded and nonetheless survived.
In sum, this is a convention over which an assassination attempt hangs very heavily. If Trump pulls substantially ahead of Biden next week, it won’t be because of just the shooting or the convention; it’ll be because one reinforces the other.
Seth, Convention bounces were a product of a more homogeneous broadcast environment where you had Walter in one booth, David in another, and Peter in the third. Today the Big 3 are not as relevant and the public gets their coverage from the network that reinforces their individual views, for example academics have to get their information and marching orders from CNN or MSDNC where as Americans tune into FOX or NEWSMAX to get the facts. It’s just an example of audience stratification and how are any minds going to be changed when no one listens to the information presented by the other side.
Really curious what you think would be the Dems wisest move going forward. I along with (I think??) a majority of pols scis and historians in my circle, tend to think that a switched nominee and all the attendant brouhaha is itself a damaging factor for a campaign and that it’s not clear that the damage done by the debate is enough to warrant inflicting additional self harm.
I base this on a kind of motley and eclectic sample of academics. I’m wondering if there is any kind of consensus on the best path forward among the academics you speak to?
Thinking about economists who write public letters to politicians about the impact of various factors and events on economic policy and/or prosperity.
And I’m wondering if there is any consensus among us about the best way forward if preserving democracy were the goal. Seems like a bunch of academics saying “wait a minute, here are the things you should at least consider” might be helpful at a moment in which it seems to me that no one is doing anything but trusting to a magical outcome of a magical convention.
Any thoughts about that?