The polls which take place in the following days after the party national convention show that the nominee gain some points. This advantage disappears after some days.
Is this a non-rational behavior? Is the candidate better than the other only because his convention took place yesterday?
Let's pretend there are two categories of people.
In Category A are people like us who can name a dozen potential presidential candidates 18 months before the election. In Category B are people, who would say, right now, "Who's Mike Pence? I've never heard that name before in my life." Both categories of people are polled, and both vote.
Once upon a time, press coverage during convention week focused entirely on what was being said at the convention. (That's less true today than when there were only 3 TV networks.) When the Category B people are polled right after one of the conventions, which candidate are they more likely to name, the candidate recently compared in all the media to the Virgin Mary or the one compared to Typhoid Mary?
