More than 24 million viewers, 100,000 balloons, and one 50-minute acceptance speech later, the results are in: The Democratic Convention has given John Kerry the “bounce” of a bowling ball. The Democratic ticket is now running even with or behind George W. Bush, and Republicans note with glee that the last presidential candidate not to enjoy a post-convention bounce was the hapless George McGovern in 1972.
Most commentators chalk this up to the dwindling number of undecided voters this year (one recent poll by the New Democrat Network found the number of those truly persuadable at a remarkably low 15 percent), leaving fewer available to win over with a convention speech. As we've all heard so many times now, the electorate is incredibly polarized.
But what's caused the dwindling number of undecided voters -- and deadened Kerry's bounce -- is not leftover partisan fervor from the 2000 election. Rather, this year's accelerated political calendar explains what we're seeing. We are witnessing a competitive general-election–style campaign months before we're accustomed to, replete with full-blown advertising campaigns. Consequently, voters' decisions about the presidential candidates came earlier than ever before. And so, too, did Kerry's bounce.
To find it you have to look pre-convention instead of post-: Kerry got his bounce four months ago when he wrapped up the nomination, and he's been riding it ever since.
Until fairly recently, primaries as late as April and May still were relevant, and the general-election campaign did not begin in earnest until Labor Day. This year, all of that has changed.
The acceleration of the political calendar began with the Democratic National Committee's decision to allow states to schedule their nominating contests in the month of February. This pushed the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary into the middle of January; as a result, more than 90 percent of all the delegates needed to win the nomination were already allocated by Super Tuesday on March 3. Not surprisingly, Kerry locked up the nomination up early -- two weeks before Al Gore's corresponding clinch in 2000, and a full eight weeks before Bill Clinton's in 1992.
Kerry's startling win in Iowa combined with his subsequent, easy rout of his opponents and their decision to immediately rally behind him to give Kerry a huge bounce after the primaries. Consider that in a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll taken a week before the Iowa caucuses, Bush led Kerry 57 percent to 40 percent. Two days after Kerry's New Hampshire primary victory, that same poll found Kerry leading Bush 52 percent to 44 percent. That's a 12-point bounce, second only -- according to Gallup -- to the size of Clinton's convention bounce in 1992 and twice the average bounce for all candidates from 1964 to 2000.
Of course, the media attention that a candidate receives during the heat of a nominating campaign almost always boosts his numbers, especially if the candidate does not have to endure a divisive battle in the primaries. Right after Bush and Gore had sewn up their nominations, for example, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that Gore led Bush (who had just weathered a much nastier nomination fight with John McCain) 49 percent to 43 percent, a 21-point net gain in support from polls take in December of 1999. It was the first time that Gore had led Bush in the Pew survey, and one of the last. While Bush, who opted out of the campaign finance system, had deep reserves of money to run his campaign in the spring and early summer of 2000, Gore had nothing.
In contrast, Kerry had the resources this year to feed his post-nomination bounce, staying ahead or within striking distance of Bush from the time he cinched the nomination. Kerry joined Bush in opting out of the campaign finance system, and, surprisingly, Kerry was able to compete.
Three things permitted this. First, the growth of the Internet and online commerce made online fundraising not just feasible, but lucrative. Second, the new campaign finance rules spawned independent 527 organizations willing and able to help Kerry counter any Bush advertising blitz. Third, the same campaign finance rules mandated that the money raised by the two campaigns be spent before their nominating conventions. As a result, the $228 million that Bush raised through June 30 of this year and the $186 million Kerry raised had to be spent -- and it was, on a barrage of ads in battleground states.
All of this created a new kind of political calendar whereby the general election has effectively been underway since March. Unlike Gore, who lacked the money to compete effectively, Kerry's campaign has been relentless, barnstorming the nation as though it were the fall, not the spring. He was able to unify the Democratic base early and begin to sway more independent voters that leaned his way. From the right, Bush -- running as many ads and campaigning just as hard -- was able to do the same.
By the time Kerry made it to Boston to formally accept the nomination, he effectively had been running in a general election for four months. His lack of a post-convention bounce, then, is not a sign of weakness but of strength -- which is why Kerry is running a livelier campaign at this stage than any other in history, and why, bounce or no bounce, he is exceptionally well-positioned to win this fall.
Kenneth S. Baer, a former senior speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, runs Baer Communications, a Democratic consulting firm.
