Which idea is stupider?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Neighboring state advantage - The idea that a candidate will get a boost not only in their home state but the states that border it because obviously every person in addition to being fully aware of who their own elected officials are are also very aware and familiar with the elected officials in all bordering states. Oh, and this applies if that person's at the bottom of the ticket as well.

Convention advantage - The idea that somehow peoples' votes will be swayed to a party by that party clogging up their city and putting it on virtual lockdown for 4 days.

Tough call. I think I'll go with the convention advantage though. At least the parties don't appear to buy into the neighboring state advantage and didn't buy into the convention advantage until 2008.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The media market thing is valid, and is probably true for primaries, but for the general it basically assumes that said candidate is worshipped as a god. Even if people are more familiar with a candidate, that doesn't mean they'll like them. And applying it to the VP candidate implies that people care 100x more about who's at the bottom of the ticket than they actually do.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And even then, as 2004 showed, it only applies to the guy at the top of the ticket.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Even if media markets result in people in one state being fairly familiar with a candidate, that doesn't mean they really care. Do most Americans have a strong opinion of Stephen Harper?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wow. Suprisingly, the Pawlenty issue (which this is obviously centered around) wasn't mentioned!

Because Pawlenty is only one such example of people buying into this stupid theory.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Neighboring state advantage has some relevance. Look at the 2008 Iowa caucus, for example, and see where Obama performed the best.

That's largely due to Illinois Democrats coming over to volunteer and help with GOTV. It's not like people in eastern Iowa thought "Obama is from the state next door, so I'll vote for him on that basis alone"

Also primaries are different from the general in this case.