Projecting your hopes/anxieties onto imaginary voters is the worst theater criticism punditry of all

This is a point that can’t possibly be made often enough:

People who watch the conventions and say what’s “effective” are simply making it up. They have no idea, except what they project on voters.

Few voters are watching or will hear much about the conventions. Fewer will change their minds.

I’m available for your cable news program.— John Sides (@johnmsides) August 27, 2020

The thing about journalists and pundits who claim to know about how a convention speech will play with swing voters is that they in fact have no idea. It’s the purest pundit fallacy of all. And it’s worse than useless, because to the extent that conventions can have any kind of sustained influence public opinion it’s because of media coverage of the conventions.

Anyway, as of now there’s zero evidence that the conventions have altered the shape of the race, which remains remarkably stable (making comparisons with 1988 or 2016 already wrong.) If we see actual changes in public opinion we can talk about how it might have been affected by the conventions then.

…via NickNeverNick in comments:

yeah https://t.co/0nWzQV7E4l— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) August 28, 2020