There is a lot of nervous buzz today about the national tracking polls. Gallup now gives John McCain a 2-point lead, the first time he has had an advantage of any amount since late May. Rasmussen, meanwhile, has the race converging back into a tie, after having shown Barack Obama ahead by 3 points yesterday.
This
tracking polling will NOT reflect any convention bounce (or its
absence). These polling firms conclude their interviews by mid-evening,
before Michelle Obama's speech and before network coverage of the
convention began. So if there is a response to the events of Monday
night, it will show up in the field on Tuesday, which means that it
will be reflected in polls released on Wednesday. Moreover, our research has concluded that there typically is not any bounce until the third day of the convention. As such, this polling tells us nothing at all about the convention so far.
It
might tell us something about Joe Biden. I tend to agree with the
conventional wisdom that there was liable to be a bit of a near-term
backlash whenever Obama announced his VP choice, provided that the VP
was not Hillary Clinton. The key phrase in there, however, is
"near-term". If Hillary is able to rally her supporters to the
Obama-Biden ticket tonight, there could still be a latent/lagged VP
bounce for Obama that gets rolled up into his convention bounce.
Besides all that, we also have a number of state polls today which generally look pretty decent for Obama.
Yep, Quinnipiac
released its "big three" swing state polling this morning. The results
are literally identical to last month in Pennsylvania, where Obama
leads by the same 49-42 margin, and essentially identical in Ohio,
where Obama's lead is down from 2 points to 1 (although with undecided
and Bob Barr improving). The difference is in Florida, which swung from
a 2-point Obama lead to a 4-point deficit. Obama's investment in the
air wars in Florida does not appear to paying immediate benefits.
Still, this result is about where other polling firms had shown
Florida, as Quinnipiac had been a modest outlier before. And that
Obama's lead is holding relatively steady in Pennsyvalnia should
reassure his supporters.
There is also polling out in North Carolina (PPP) and Texas (Rasmussen),
which shows North Carolina and Texas at the same margins they have been
polling at since antiquity, with McCain holding a 10-point lead among
Texans and a 3-point lead among Tarheels.
--Nate Silver