LANSING, Mich (WZMQ) – It’s been just over a month since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race as the nominee for the Democratic party. On Monday, the party will gather for its 2024 convention with Kamala Harris as the new nominee and the task of gaining enough support to secure the election in November.
Ten days into the Harris Walz campaign, democrats are now preparing for a national convention that will look very different from what they had planned just over a month ago.
Conventions used to act as the place where a party would select the final nominee, but for decades, the official candidate has been chosen through primaries that occur long before the convention takes place. Even Harris solidified her spot as the Democratic nominee back on August 5th.
Dante Chinni is the Director of The American Communities Projects. A combined social science and journalism effort based at the Michigan State University School of Journalism that uses a vast array of data from election results and economic numbers to consumer surveys and polling to break communities into different types for analysis.
Chinni explained that even though the convention has been mostly ceremonial in the recent past, this year’s may be more important for voters.
“Look, it’s always been fairly ceremonial or it has been for quite some time,” Chinni said. “It’s really about getting everybody on the same page, driving home the point you wanna drive home, getting up energy, and really trying to get that kind of bump out the convention and polls.”
Though delegates have already made their decision, key swing states still play an important role in these conventions, with both happening in the Midwest showing that parties are focused on winning over voters in battleground states.
The DNC will be a major opportunity for Harris and Walz to identify what their policy stances are. Which will be important when it comes to winning over the independent, moderate, and undecided voters that they’ll need to win in the fall.
“They had their nominee locked in a long time ago and then he’s not the nominee anymore… You’re kind of building an airplane while it’s in the air at this convention, and how do they handle that?” Chinni said. “Who is Kamala Harris? Who is Tim Walz? What’s their agenda? Those are questions that I think a lot of Americans still are gonna want answered as of next week.”
It’s anticipated even more eyes than normal will be on next week’s convention as we continue to learn more about the democratic candidates working to solidify a lead in the polls against the republican Trump/Vance ticket.
