Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Big Shows, Little Shows

I went back and forth over posting this. It is one of those topics where pundits and their poor relations, bloggers, tend to read in too much. I was also concerned that, since the establishment press seem to be ignoring the story, the smaller and more partisan sources I was left with might not be giving me a true picture. As more data points came in, however, I came around to the idea that there is something worth paying attention to hear.

Unserious people spend too much time focused on spectacle and anecdote, but I think serious people sometimes spend too little. Something can be a good show and also an important story. As for the latter, the vast majority of the information we have to work with consists of anecdotes. If you can't get a handle on anecdotal reasoning, about the best you can shoot for is overeducated idiot.

Now let's cautiously talk about campaign events and crowd sizes.

I've never paid a lot of attention to political conventions so maybe I'm missing an obvious counterexample, but the Harris campaign is doing something that would seem to be highly unusual, and they are doing so in a way deliberately designed to get into Donald Trump's head.



Just so there is no confusion, the Milwaukee rally is going on during the DNC roll call.



Donald Trump had originally announced that he would largely step back from campaigning until after the end of the Democratic convention. He then did a 180 and announced a series of appearances in swing states. They have not been getting good notices. 



Edith Olmsted The New Republic

Donald Trump delivered a strangely low-energy speech on Monday at a factory in York, Pennsylvania.

While the crowd at Precision Custom Components started off cheering at the former president’s compliments about Pennsylvania and promises to bolster American manufacturing, any initial enthusiasm appeared to wane as Trump proceeded through his remarks in a monotone reading voice.

“Kamala puts America last, I put America first,” Trump said, sounding completely dejected. He frowned as the crowd cheered.





Vance was also on the road.


And just a reminder, this...
... was not the main show for the Democrats Tuesday.

Like I said, we don't want to read too much into this, but we shouldn't read too little into it either. While crowd size and candidate affect are not reliable measures, they can be leading indicators, particularly when paired with things like voter registration, small dollar donations, and trends in polling. Perhaps more importantly, in politics perceptions have a way of becoming reality, or at least of pushing reality aside. For the past month, perception has been far kinder to Harris then to Trump.

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2 comments:

  1. Brian GawaltAugust 21, 2024 at 11:41 PM

    Everything you say seems very plausible. If rather my candidate be selling out stadiums than not; if rather then be peppy and happy and confident than not. And I agree that seems like it can spin up a bandwagon flywheel.

    But! It will also, I imagine, do a great deal for differential nonresponse. So this is a comment to say, the Dem rallies will probably lead to a polling bump, but there will be two competing explanations for why: suddenly boisterous Dem boosters answering polls, suddenly sullen GOP voters demurring.

    Even if the boisterousness/sullenness is long lived and important to November outcomes, I wouldn't count on us normie polling consumers to know right away.

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    1. AnonymousAugust 22, 2024 at 6:33 AM

      I'd be surprised if an even larger than normal portion of Harris's postconvention bounce wasn't due to happy Democrats self-selecting. We've been arguing that mood and narrative affect response bias since Obama versus Romney and this year is certainly a prime candidate.

      I'm certainly not saying that we should put too much weight on this, let alone make any predictions based on. We have had three maybe four black swans already this year and lots can happen in the next two and a half months. I'm just saying that it's usually better to take a holistic approach to elections, including things like fundraising, economic conditions, voter registration, rather than just looking at the polls. Crowd sizes and enthusiasm as are another part of the picture, and in this case, a fairly stark one.

      MP

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