President Obama's post-Democratic convention bounce continued to grow on Sunday, albeit at a slightly reduced pace. That said, a convention bump that already more than doubled up the bounce of his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, now is close tp triple the size of the Mitt "bounce." And the gap between the two bounces could grow greater still by the time Monday Night Football kicks off.
On to the numbers:
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama d. Romney (49-44)
NATIONAL (Ipsos/Reuters Tracking): Obama d. Romney (47-43 LV; 45-40 RV)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (49-45)
NEW MEXICO (Research and Polling for the Albuquerque Journal): Obama d. Romney and Gary Johnson (45-40-7)
NORTH CAROLINA (PPP): Obama d. Romney (49-48)
OHIO (PPP): Obama d. Romney (50-45)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
NM-SEN (Research and Polling for the Albuquerque Journal): Martin Heinrich (D) 49, Heather Wilson (R) 42
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump...
With all four of our tracking polls offering fresh data on Sunday, we can get a new perspective on the size of the Obama post-DNC bounce:
Gallup: From Obama +1 to Obama +5 (Obama +4)
Rasmussen: Romney +3 to Obama +4 (Obama +7)
Ipsos/Reuters LV: Romney +2 to Obama +4 (Obama +6)
Ipsos/Reuters RV: Tied to Obama +5 (Obama +5)
NET BOUNCE (4 surveys): Obama +5.5 percent
A reminder from the
Saturday edition of the Polling Wrap: using the seven available week-to-week data points, the Romney bounce averaged out to 1.9 percentage points.
There may yet still be some room for growth. Even though there are already signs that the post-Clinton/Obama speech high has abated, the Gallup tracker still has three full days of pre-convention data to purge, and it is likely to be replaced with better data. President Obama's 5-point edge could, in theory, slide out a couple of points.
Obama, it would seem, based on a huge leap in his job approval between Saturday and Sunday, had a giant Saturday night in Rasmussen's tracking. His job approval jumped six points in a day (from 49/50 to 52/47, the best it has been in a year). That means that he could be due for a couple more good days there, as well.
By the way, it is always a chilly day in Hades when the Wrap tells you to take something of value from a poll by the House of Ras. That said, their job approval numbers on Sunday, much to the chagrin of their GOP cheerleaders, lays absolute waste to their favored meme that the BLS jobs report on Friday was going to be a force that would stall, or even reverse, the Obama post-convention bounce.
If there is one hitch in Obama's giddy-up, it might be Ipsos/Reuters. In their convention-themed tracking survey, his LV bump already stalled out on Sunday (though, curiously, his RV edge moved from 3 to 5 points).
No matter what, Obama's convention bounce is already higher than just about everyone anticipated, and exceeded projections that had been set before the convention season began.
The question now, or perhaps more appropriately, the challenge for the Obama camp, is to sustain the clear edge they now enjoy, and even expand on it if and when the Romney team gives them an opening.
In other polling news...
- That new poll out of New Mexico, courtesy of the Albuquerque Journal, is pretty quirky. They give Obama a 30-point lead over Mitt Romney with Latino voters, yet the toplines are reasonably competitive. If Latinos are a similar proportion of the electorate in the Land of Enchantment that they were in 2008 (when they were over 40 percent of the vote), it is hard to see how the numbers track. Even if Obama was getting thumped with whites, the numbers don't add up quite right.
- Meanwhile, in Ohio, with a fairly pessimistic sample for Democrats (a net D+4 on party ID, Obama only getting 81 percent of the African-American vote), Obama still holds a five-point lead over Mitt Romney. This comes amid a flurry of media reports that both parties are seeing internal polling out of the Buckeye State that (reading between the lines) make Obama +5 sound, if anything, optimistic for the GOP.
- More polling is on its way: PPP also polled North Carolina, Montana, and Minnesota, and one assumes that both CNN and YouGov will add their voices to the question of the post-DNC bounce. Downballot, a Siena poll of one of two vulnerable Democratic seats in upstate New York (Bill Owens: NY-21) is on deck today. Plus, with the conventions now out of the way, expect a flurry of "baseline" polls looking ahead to November within the next week or two.