The two parties’ nominating conventions this year say a lot about the parties behind them.
Carl Cavalli, a University of North Georgia political science professor, spoke with WABE’s “All Things Considered” host Jim Burress about emerging polling data, and how much of a lead that challenger Joe Biden holds over President Donald Trump.
“Biden has a large lead, one of the largest leads that a challenger has had over an incumbent in a long time, so it’s not likely he will pick up any more,” Cavalli said.
“He’s probably got as many votes as he can possibly get.”
According to new national surveys, Biden has about an 8% lead over Trump. In Georgia so far, Biden and Trump’s numbers are much closer together, at 46% and 45%.
But Cavalli noted that Trump stands to gain more because he’s behind where he was during the 2016 presidential election – and this is a battleground, electoral college race.
“It’s Joe Biden’s race to lose. His lead is larger than Hillary Clinton’s was, and given the narrow victory that Trump won in several states, that gave him an electoral college victory, he would be hard-pressed to repeat that,” Cavalli said.
Cavalli compares the Democrats’ prime time convention this past week as a little like the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, as it moved from segment to segment with the goal of persuading viewers to make a pledge — or, in this case, cast a vote.
Cavalli says Republicans, on the other hand, appear to be preserving as much of a traditional-feeling convention as possible — a potential danger given the live nature of the event.
America is 10 weeks from the November election. Cavalli said he expects things to get nasty, and political campaigns will more aggressively target voters.
“I do expect that there will be a lot of negative campaigning. We’ve seen at least a taste of it in both conventions so far,” Cavalli said.
“We’re going to see these things on our cellphones, on our tablets, on our televisions, all over the place. And again, expect the campaigns to be pretty negative.”
Lily Oppenheimer contributed to this report.
