Ok, so I watched as much of the convention from tonight as I could stomach. I think the convention was effective at rallying up Trump's base. If you are already on board with him, tonight should fire you up even more. If you are voting for Biden like me, you wanted to throw stuff at the TV in frustration, lol.
As for undecided voters, I don't know if tonight was that effective. It wasn't terrible. I think Trump meeting with regular citizens and hearing their stories wasn't all bad. I think it was at least an effort to show he can connect with the average Joe, but I don't know how many people outside of his base will buy that.
Also, there was a lot of effort from the various speakers to paint the Democrats as radical, extreme, and dangerous. Given how positive and upbeat the Democratic convention was, I don't know how many voters are going to buy the Republicans' message about the Democrats being so dangerous and radical.
There was also an effort to make it sound like Trump is handling COVID-19 well and that he has a plan for the economy. As if the United States didn't have 180,000 deaths and 30M unemployed. I don't know how well that message will play over.
All in all, if you are part of Trump's base and you love him, tonight was great. If you hate Trump and are all in on Biden, you naturally disliked much if not all of what we saw. And if you are an undecided/swing voter, I'm not sure how much if any of tonight you are buying. I would say tonight was a net good for Trump's efforts to energize his base and a net good for the Democrats in that much wasn't done to get those much needed crossover votes.
One thing to keep in mind is you have a solid number of Republicans who aren't voting for Trump again, so this was a last ditch effort to maybe claim back some of those people and keep the base that is all in on Trump happy. The Republicans are behind in the count, but they have to start somewhere.
And to touch quickly on production value, I felt the overall layout of the Republican convention tonight was fine. There were concerns about that, but I thought the presentation in terms of formatting to fit television and all, was fine. It wasn't as warm and fuzzy as the Democratic convention, but I don't think that's the vibe they're going for. They're going for more doom and gloom and also fear.