With St. Paul preparing to host a four-day GOP extravaganza during the Republican National Convention and Gov. Tim Pawlenty floating at the top of John McCain's list of prospective running mates, you might think Republicans will enjoy a healthy electoral bounce in Minnesota this year.
If history is any indication, it's likely to be more of a blip.
Research shows that a vice-presidential pick provides virtually no advantage in the candidate's home state. And an examination of the past dozen presidential elections shows that the bump from a convention is equally negligible.
Nonetheless, state GOP insiders say that every little bit will help in what they expect to be a competitive race in a once-reliably Democratic state. "Is the convention being here a game-changer? Absolutely not," said chairman Ron Carey. "But if it gives us x-thousand extra votes, it nibbles at the edges and can only help us."
Dan Hofrenning, a political science professor at St. Olaf College, said the convention location and vice-presidential pick "can have marginal changes."
But he said that "in most campaigns, short of a huge gaffe, there aren't any game-changing events."
The persistence of the belief in those bounces "may be one of those great pop cultural myths -- along with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster," said David Schultz, a political scientist at Hamline University. "Everyone believes it, but when push comes to shove, the evidence isn't there that these things have any discernible effect."
You could look it up
The lack of a vice-presidential home state bump in November is well-established.
Although most presidential tickets during the past half-century have been regionally balanced, researchers found almost no evidence that the vice-presidential candidate increased the ticket's margin in his own state. A 1989 study found that, on average, vice-presidential candidates improved their ticket's performance in their own state by 0.3 percentage points, compared to previous elections.
Four years ago, for example, Democratic veep candidate John Edwards was expected to help John Kerry in North Carolina. The ticket lost there by 13 percentage points, the same margin by which Democrats had trailed four years earlier, with no native son on the ballot.
And no one argues that George W. Bush needed Dick Cheney to win Wyoming --any more than Jimmy Carter needed Walter Mondale to carry Minnesota in 1976.
Most researchers point to 1960 -- when Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson was John Kennedy's running mate -- as the last time a vice-presidential pick may have swung a home state, even though Texas was heavily Democratic at the time.
A Star Tribune Minnesota Poll this spring found that most Minnesotans say they won't be influenced one way or another in their presidential voting if Pawlenty ends up as McCain's running mate.
Convention non-bounce?
No systematic research has been done about the effect on voters of hosting a convention, but an examination of election results dating to 1960 shows that it's essentially been a wash.
In 12 elections since then, Democrats have won the state where their convention was held six times. So have Republicans. And comparing the parties' performance to the previous election cycle shows that each has improved their vote totals just four times.
And it's impossible to say whether the site of a party's convention contributed to its success in a given state, because both parties' strong showings correlated closely with the final, national result.
For example, in 1964, the Democrats handily won both states where the conventions were held -- in the midst of a Democratic landslide. The same thing happened for Republicans in their landslide win in 1984.
Convention organizers are looking to influence an electorate far bigger than the hometown one. And the choice of a convention city can be used to send another message to that national audience of TV viewers, Schulz said.
St. Paul and Denver, where the Democrats are gathering next month, were unusual choices, both because they're smaller than most of the cities chosen in recent elections and because neither is considered the traditional turf of the party convening there.
Each party may be hoping to suggest that the appeal of its message is spreading to new regions and new voter groups.
Business decision
Closer to home, the effort to snag both parties' conventions was more about dollars than winning votes in November.
"There was a political calculation ... because this is barely a purple state anymore," said Charlie Weaver, a GOP heavyweight who pushed hard for the convention as head of the Minnesota Business Partnership. "But the political considerations were minor."
In the runup to the party's decision to choose St. Paul, "generating an economic bounce was probably 90 percent of the discussion," Weaver said. "The chance [of a boost in Minnesota] was a factor, but only a small factor."
Erin Dady, St. Paul's marketing director, agreed. "Throughout the bidding process, which we did for both conventions, it was never about politics -- it was all about business," she said. "No one was talking about swaying voters."
It would be great, Weaver said, if the convention helps the party's ticket here in November, "but I'd be shocked if anyone thinks we'll pick up seats in the Minnesota House because we had a great convention."
For his part, Carey figures the convention can only burnish the GOP's brand, given the massive local news coverage it will generate.
"Around here, there'll be such saturation coverage that it will be the story for a week or more," he said. "People won't be able to avoid the Republican message. How can that possibly be a bad thing for us?"
Bob von Sternberg • 612-673-7184
