Professor Pundits: Conventions and the Unconventional

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — If you watched the Repulican National Convention and scanned the audience very carefully, you might have seen the face of our very own Professor Matt Dickinson, who attended the convention representing Middlebury Magazine and his own blog, Presidential Power. Dickinson reports that the convention was surprisingly “vanilla,” lacking much of the political drama that had been predicted. It was a testament, he says, to the remarkable amount of control candidate Trump had gained over the unruly process by the time the convention began.

In this installment of Professor Pundits, Johnson and Dickinson discuss both parties’ conventions and what, if anything, it means to get a convention “bounce” in the polls. They also consider whether either side should be concerned with a third party candidate and they compare the vastly differing campaigning strategies of Trump and Clinton.

Dickinson writes the blog Presidential Power and is frequently quoted in the national news media. He often live tweets political events at @MattDickinson44. Johnson, also a regular in the national media, tweets at @bnjohns.

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