Jan. 23--The next Democratic National Convention will be held the week of July 25, 2016, putting it only a week after the Republican convention that is scheduled to begin July 18, party officials announced Friday.
The Democratic National Committee's choice to schedule a convention so closely following the Republican gathering will be viewed as an effort to blunt a GOP nominee's momentum coming out of the gathering.
The Republican National Committee has selected Cleveland as its convention host city.
The Democratic committee is still in negotiations over which city the party's convention will be held in: Columbus, Ohio; New York or Philadelphia. If Democrats select Columbus as their host city, it will be the first time since 1972 that a single state has held both the Democratic and Republican conventions.
The timing of the conventions means that planners are returning to a mid-summer schedule after several election cycles in which both parties pushed their gatherings deep into the summer in an effort to gain a tactical advantage that never clearly materialized.
The schedule also means that both conventions will be over before the 2016 Summer Olympics begin in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5, 2016.
Staff writers Mark Barabak in San Francisco and David Lauter in Washington contributed to this report.
UPDATE
10:37 a.m. This article has been updated to add analysis on the timing of the conventions.
This article was originally published at 10:03 a.m.
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