Okay, It’s All Post-Convention Now…
…and we can see clearly that the Republicans had a very successful convention. It’s not the convention I wanted, mind you – Romney was horrible, my man Rudy was bombastic, and McCain a bit dull, though Palin was a shocking surprise on the upside. Indeed, I wonder whether what we are seeing is a conventional, er, convention bounce, or a Palin bounce. Nevertheless, if I needed confirmation that conventions are not aimed at me, the latest polling provides it.
The undeniable fact, now that all the tracking polls are post-convention, is that we see a huge swing in the Republican direction. Though Rasmussen has McCain by a single point, pre-convention, he was down six, for a seven-point swing. Gallup shows an eleven-point swing (McCain went from down six to up 5). This is not necessarily the same thing as the ‘bounce’ – Gallup and others often describe the bounce as the amount support for the candidate increased by, not the swing in the head-to-head – but the head-to-head is more relevant, is it not?
I could go beyond the tracking polls and point to the ‘full-blown’ polls, also, but suffice to say, the story is the same across the board: McCain got a giant boost. For the first time that I can recall, he is leading in the RealClearPolitics poll summary, and Intrade, where Obama once enjoyed a nearly two-to-one advantage, now has Obama up a mere seven points, 53-46.
Now, convention bounces (or even a Palin bounce, one assumes) can be quite transitory, and we still have the debates ahead of us. I maintain that Obama remains the frontrunnner, if for no other reason than this is a year that strongly favors Democrats. But the possibility that John McCain just might win this thing is on a lot of people’s minds right now, particularly increasingly nervous Democrats…
McCain was trading at 50.5 on Intrade for a brief period today.
Not that that means anything…just interesting to point out.
Polls remain pretty meaningless for a couple of weeks still.
Still fun to crow about when they are on your side.
You are right regarding Intrade and I will add the Iowa Political Futures-they really don’t predict anything, they just reflect whatever the polls say. On election day 2004, if you remember, the media/left tried to sabotage everyone by quoting bogus exit polling numbers-the markets dropped all the way down to like 90-10 for Kerry and then went up with the real news.
I think this misreads the polls a little. McCain was way down before the convention, but that’s because of Obama’s bounce from the Democratic convention. Measuring the swing toward McCain from the most articially low point he was at or will likely ever be is going to introduce some pretty severe bias.
That said, I don’t know what the appropriate way to measure McCain’s bounce is. I’m inclined to believe that, since evidence indicates the bounce is generally ultimately meaningless, we should measure McCain’s bounce from BEFORE the Democratic convention. Obama was up by 1 or so then, which would put Obama’s bounce at something like 4-5 and McCain’s at a very similar 4-5.
Ryan, you make a good point. Obama’s lead pre-convention was boosted by his own post-convention bounce – although I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s post-convention bounce at least SEEMS a little stronger – maybe because expectations were much lower…