Fox News Lowers Impact of GOP Convention?

Last week's convention didn't do much for the GOP. Fox New's success might explain this.

In 1996, the two major parties got media outlets. Suddenly, along with PBS and the major networks, we had the partisan broadcasters Fox News and MSNBC. Since then, political conventions seem less effective at changing votes.

After the Democrats nominated Clinton at their 1992 convention, 45% of voters reported that they would be more likely to vote for them. No convention since has come close in impact. In fact, the GOP's convention last week gave the party a bounce of only 2 percent. No convention since Gallup has begun tracking this has been so negligible.

The Democratic convention seems to consistently produce a bigger bounce. I wonder if the fact that Fox News has higher ratings than MSNBC (Fox has nearly double MSNBC's ratings) is a reason that political conventions do less for the GOP. For them, winning approval and rousing the base is more of a daily game than an election year exercise.

If the Dems are more reliant on post-convention bounce, it suggests that this week's convention matters more for the Democrats than last week's GOP convention. Given that, it is no wonder that they're featuring Clinton, hoping for some measure of the 1992 magic.