Obama Got His Bounce

Well despite many pundits claims to the contrary, Obama got a significant bounce in public opinion polls from their convention. Two weeks ago, Obama lead McCain by a statistically insignificant 1.2 %, and his numbers were falling. Today, the RCP average of polls has Obama leading McCain by 6.4%. That’s a gain of 5.2% - near the historic average of 5% for the "Convention Bounce".

Analysis shows that most of these gains occurred between Friday and today: well after the announcement of Joe Biden as Obama's VP pick - so we can safely say that Joe brought no short term gains to Obama's Campaign. Most of the polling also occurred after McCain’s announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate. So whatever effect she has had on public opinion has already been factored into Obama's current lead. Obama's numbers did not start to rise until Friday morning - so we can probably ascribe most of that rise to Obama's Thursday night speech, and to the general air of reconciliation that pervaded at the Democratic convention.

Of course, none of this yet factors in the bounce McCain may get from the Republican Convention just getting under way. More on that next week.