We’ll be reporting from Philadelphia all week and live-blogging each night. Check out all our dispatches from the Democratic convention here.

There have been predictions that the 2016 election will be among the most negative in modern politics. Both candidates have high unfavorable ratings. And with the Democratic convention officially approving the party’s platform on Monday, we have another instance of attack-heavy politics: There are 32 mentions of Donald Trump in the Democratic platform. At first glance, this might not seem like such a big deal. After all, the Republicans’ convention featured chants about putting Hillary Clinton in jail. But the Democrats’ Trump-laden platform is unusual.

When a party has a president in the White House, the party platform has tended not to focus on the opposing party’s candidate. That’s changed a bit recently, and the 2016 Democratic platform solidifies that trend:

YEAR PARTY MENTIONS OF OPPONENT TOTAL WORDS 1952 D 0 8,878 1956 R 0 11,390 1960 R 0 10,680 1964 D 0 20,126 1968 D 0 16,791 1972 R 0 24,407 1976 R 1 20,463 1980 D 0 34,558 1984 R 54 27,383 1988 R 0 35,838 1992 R 0 28,531 1996 D 21 18,107 2000 D 5 24,220 2004 R 3 41,275 2008 R 0 23,585 2012 D 22 26,558 2016 D 32 26,058 Platforms of parties when they hold the White House Note: The Democratic candidate in 1984, Walter Mondale, was the vice president during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and most of these references are to the “Carter-Mondale” administration. Source: The American Presidency Project

The number of Trump mentions is roughly in line with the number of times the Democratic platform mentioned Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Richard Nixon in 1972 and George W. Bush in 2004, according to The American Presidency Project. But there’s a big difference — those platforms all came in years when Democrats were running against incumbent presidents. Here are the number of opponent mentions in platforms for out-of-power parties:

MENTIONS ELECTION PARTY OF OPPONENT OF OUTGOING PRESIDENT (IF DIFFERENT) TOTAL WORDS 1952 R 0 0 5,988 1956 D 31 — 12,839 1960 D 0 1 16,089 1964 R 0 — 8,740 1968 R 4 4 10,013 1972 D 51 — 24,407 1976 D 15 10 21,202 1980 R 125 — 34,558 1984 D 197 — 37,231 1988 D 0 0 4,838 1992 D 11 — 8,555 1996 R 153 — 27,817 2000 R 3 2 34,555 2004 D 39 — 17,751 2008 D 0 8 25,997 2012 R 10 — 30,563 2016 R 1 19 35,467 Platforms of parties when they don’t hold the White House Note: The 1964 Republican platform does mention “the administration” throughout, but that’s not counted here. All four mentions of the incumbent president in 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson, were in conjunction with the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey.

In 1976, “opponent” refers to Gerald Ford and “outgoing president” to Richard Nixon. Source: The American Presidency Project

The average number of opponent mentions is about 38 for the party out of power, while it’s around eight for the party that controls the White House. For whatever reason, this is especially true for the party in power when it doesn’t have an incumbent president on the ticket. When there was a candidate running for a third term of party control — Nixon in 1960, George H.W. Bush in 1988, John McCain in 2008 — most of the party platforms didn’t mention the opponent (Gore mentioned George W. Bush a handful of times). Clinton deviates from that pattern.

It is, however, becoming more common for the party in power to mention the opposing candidate in its platform. This trend might reflect closer competition and tighter presidential election margins, or simply higher levels of polarization and incentive to provide “red meat” (or the less appetizing blue meat, I guess) to the base. Whatever the reason, when it comes to focusing on the opponent, this year’s platform is out of step with comparable years.





A woman president wouldn’t erase centuries of male-dominated politics