The American Spectator

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Gallup Credits McCain With 6-point Bounce

By Philip Klein on 9.8.08 @ 1:44PM

That compares with a 4-point bounce for Barack Obama. Today's Gallup daily tracking poll (which is different than the USA Today poll I noted earlier) has McCain up 49 to 45.

The typical bounce coming out of the convention is five points.

And some more context from the folks at Gallup:

But there are also examples where a consistently trailing candidate took the lead after his party's convention, but later relinquished it -- Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Al Gore in 2000.

So basically, your guess is as good as anybody's. But there's one point worth making. All along, it's been assumed that the conventions would favor Obama, because whenever he gets to give a major teleprompter speech to a huge national audience, he has an advantage. His convention speech was supposed to be the most significant moment of his campaign. Yet it turns out that the conventions were acually better for McCain. And now we move on to the season of debates and unscripted moments, which is where McCain tends to shine.

topics:
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton