With presidential elections coming in the shadow of political violence and division, how will the national conventions and electoral process affect voters?
National political conventions
Conventions “aren’t what they used to be — that’s for sure,” said Sherry Jeffe, retired public policy communication professor for the University of Southern California and former political analyst for NBC4 Los Angeles. “Conventions used to be how delegates chose the presidential and vice presidential nominees … Today, they’re more about campaigning for a choice that’s already been made through the primaries.”
Jeffe joined a panel of speakers for a July 19 Ethnic Media Services briefing, just two days before Biden announced his withdrawal from the campaign, passing the torch to his vice president, Kamala Harris.
Anticipating Biden’s departure, Jeffe predicted the Democratic convention would “have the muscle it hasn’t had for a very long time.”
Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to serve as vice president, would become the nation’s first female president should she win the election in November. A majority of Democratic delegates have pledged their support for her campaign, while on Thursday former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama formally endorsed her.
Still, Jeffe stressed, “I could argue that this is the first convention in the social media era, and that has everybody as a ‘delegate,’” She continued, “Even with Obama, social media was mainly a fundraising tool … Now, social media is shaping the debate. Every campaign now has a director of social media, and Donald Trump even has his own social media platform,” Truth Social.
“That shift really accelerated with the pandemic limiting the in-person campaigning ability of both parties,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center.
“Beyond relying on social media as a fundraising and messaging tool, 2020 is when you first see the nomination, campaign and convention process exist primarily or initially online,” he explained, adding the result has been “more disinformation circulating through social media than ever … lowering confidence in the electoral system.”
The Pew Research Center reports that as of April 2024, 22% of Americans trust the federal government “just about always” or “most of the time” — a near-historic low echoing a June 2024 Partnership for Public Service poll which found that just 23% of Americans trust the government at all.
“The conventions are really public relations events,” said Bill Schneider, professor emeritus of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and former CNN senior political analyst. “The process of screening the candidates’ moral, medical, legal or financial records, formerly done by party bosses, is now done by the press to inform ordinary voters choosing a nominee” prior to the convention, in the primaries.
The 2024 Republican National Convention, held in Milwaukee the week of Monday, July 15, “proved that Donald Trump has taken complete possession of the Republican Party. There is no opposition anymore,” Schneider added. “It’s not just the party of Trump but Archie Bunker. It’s changed its base from the ‘country club’ league of wealthier Americans to the white working class.”
The 2024 elections and electorate
Trump’s domination of the party has significant consequences for Republican policy, Schneider continued. “The conservatism of Reagan and both Bushes has been repudiated. The Republican Party had been internationalist since 1949, when it voted to join NATO. It’s now an isolationist party. It doesn’t talk about national debt anymore … Now, it’s a populist party — not just economically, but social populism … He intends to deport a million illegal immigrants in his first year.”
Accordingly, Republican voters are realigning culturally.
“White voters without a college degree have been becoming more Republican for about 20 years, the reason has less to do with economics than it does with cultural issues,” he said. “They resent the power of the educated elite who run the Democratic Party. We call it the ‘diploma divide.’”
The electoral college itself “now has principally Republican supporters because without it, Trump would never have become president. He lost the popular vote,” Schneider said. “But nothing is likely to change in the electoral rules … because to change the Electoral College, you have to change the Constitution, which involves not just Congress, but state legislatures, which are now dominated by Republicans and are likely to be more dominated by Republicans.”
Trump’s domination of the Republican party accompanies new charges by Trump and his allies of voter fraud like those in 2020, which saw over 60 cases nationwide regarding a stolen election, where judges — often appointed by Republicans in swing states — ruled that there was no fraud.
Nevertheless, in 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws restricting voting access.
Similarly this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register. Although citizenship is already required to vote, the legislation introduces costly administration changes to each step of the registration process which would take months or years to implement.
Trump himself has said he’ll only accept the results of the 2024 election “if everything’s honest.”
“If you say enough times that there’s all this fraud, no matter how little evidence you have, some people will start to believe it,” said Diaz. “If the election’s close, or if he loses, he can take advantage of that uncertainty to try to overturn the results like he did in 2020 … this time with a federal judiciary and a Supreme Court that is much more inclined to take his side.”
Against three Democratic Supreme Court appointees, there is currently a supermajority of six Republican-appointed judges — three appointed by Trump, two by George H. W. Bush and one by George W. Bush.
“What gives me hope is that the concern among regular people over the health of our democracy has only increased,” said Diaz. “Before I was a lawyer, election reforms didn’t rank very highly on my list of priorities when voting for a candidate, and candidates didn’t talk much about voting rights and the need to preserve democracy. Now they do, and it ranks highly on the polls as issues that voters are concerned about.”
A March 2024 Georgetown survey conducted by both Republican and Democrat pollsters found that 81% of respondents believed American democracy is/was being threatened, with 72% agreeing with that statement strongly.
“Democracy only works if everyone plays their part to not just preserve but advance it,” said Diaz. “When I talk to regular voters who are concerned about the direction not just that the country is heading, but that democracy is heading, it gives me hope that the fight is not over yet.”
