Things That Don't Go Bump in the Night

The first night of the Republican convention got 15.8 million viewers.  By comparison, the Democratic convention averaged about 18.7 million viewers over the networks and three cable channels.  This isn't a substantive fact, though given how much attention Trump always puts on TV ratings, it has to gall him.  That's assuming anyone on his staff has had the courage to pass the news on to him.

Though not substantive, it is not without meaning, however.

The conventions have dropped viewership significantly from 2016.  In large part, I think that this is because many people have sensed the conventions would be largely talking heads in a big Zoom conference.  There's another partial explanation, though, and that's that so many people have already decided who they're going to vote for.  So, there's no great need to watch to help make your decision.

By the way, more important than any explanation -- since the reasons will likely be somewhat similar for either party's convention -- is that the Republican convention had about 15% fewer viewers.

But the issue of “already decided” can't be easily dismissed because it overlaps with another issue -- that while Joe Biden personally got a 3-5 point bump after the Democratic Convention for how the public thinks of him, although he didn't get much of a bump afterwards for how they'll vote.  Initially, that was seen as somewhat of a disappointment for Democrats.  But I wonder if there's another reason for that, and one that's more troubling for Republicans.

What I wonder is if Biden not getting much of a bump from the convention is related to, again, most people already having decided who to vote for.  If so, then the Democratic Convention didn't give him a bump not because it didn't convince anyone...but because people were already convinced.  A convention wouldn’t change that.  And if that’s the case, then Joe Biden being up by 9 points right now is major, and a big problem for Republicans.  Especially when you add to that how the Republican Convention ratings were down -- not to mention getting awful “reviews” for being so dystopian, loudly angry, racist (and that's before getting to the speaker who they had to cancel last night for her anti-Semitic conspiracy views of a Jewish plot to enslave the world's goyim -- I'm not joking, you know -- that were too egregious even for the white supremacist party of Trump) and without a platform of anything it stands for, other than "Vote for Trump" -- which isn't a platform, but a bumper sticker.  And if that's the case, that personal bump for Biden then means the convention got people who unsure about their vote for Biden (oddly, the opposite ends of the spectrum, deep progressives and Republicans switching) to be more comfortable with him.

I don't know for certain if any of this is related to people having made of their minds.  It seems very possible, but no idea for sure.  I do know that when polls ask how firm people are in their choice of who they say they will be voting for, the numbers are exceedingly high -- and for this early in the race, they are unprecedentedly high.

All of which points to what a disservice Republicans have done to themselves by putting the Postal Service in question.  This has likely pushed people to vote by mail or in person far earlier than they were otherwise planning to.  And if, indeed, most voters have already decided on who they are voting for then Trump and the GOP have lost precious time to change minds that are largely been made up -- before they vote early..

​The General Election is on November 3.  But early voting starts as early as in just three weeks.

Time, it is a fleeting thing.  Sometimes, though, it is more fleeting than usual.