As I have said all along, convention "bounces" are a bit of a delayed reaction to the conventions themselves. Because polls are often multiday samples (and seven full ones, in Gallup's case), you need to get a few days removed from the election to see the impact, to begin with. What's more, as is the case with many news events, the "bounce" is often dependent on emails, chats, and polite conversation around the lunch table at work.
That said, much like you can get a sense of a game at halftime, you can get some inkling about convention bounces even within 24 hours of the end of the convention. At least one night of polling will reflect convention coverage, which means trajectory could be foreshadowed in the Wednesday and Thursday night numbers. And if that is true, Barack Obama might be on his way to something that Mitt Romney could not generate in his own convention: a bounce.
On to the numbers:
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (American Research Group): Romney d. Obama (49-46)
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama d. Romney (48-45)
NATIONAL (Ipsos/Reuters Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-44 LV; 45-42 RV)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Romney d. Obama (46-45)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
NJ-SEN (Rutgers/Eagleton): Sen. Robert Menendez (D) 47, Joe Kyrillos (R) 35
NC-GOV (SurveyUSA for the Civitas Institute): Pat McCrory (R) 55, Walter Dalton (D) 39, Barbara Howe (L) 4
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump ...
Leaving aside American Research Group's poll for a moment (and not because of the Romney lead, but because of the lack of a preceding poll to measure trends), let's look at the three pollsters that have offered tracking data.
Examining those polls, we see that Barack Obama gained an average of 2.3 points since yesterday. He gained a net of two points from Gallup (the first movement at all from Gallup in over a week), and two points from Rasmussen (fueled by a sharp movement from Independent voters, who shifted from Romney +8 the day before to Obama +2 in today's tracking poll). He also gained three points from the Ipsos/Reuters tracking poll, which gave him his first lead in about a week.
The one day of movement (which, if Romney's own convention is a guide, could be the first of about four days of movement), already exceeds the entirety of the bounce from the GOP convention in Tampa (a bounce which came to rest just under two percentage points). It also more than exceeds the very modest projections by political science professor Thomas Holbrook, who said the president could expect a 1.1 point bump.
And it could grow over the weekend. Gallup's head-to-head tracking numbers are based on a seven-day sample, dating back to just after the GOP convention last week. But their job approval numbers are on a three-day sample. Barack Obama's rise in that metric this week has been startling. On Sunday, with the sample having been conducted in the afterglow of the GOP convention, Obama's job approval spread was a net-negative of five points (43/48). This morning, Obama's job approval spread had climbed to a net-positive of nine points (52/43). That is a 14-point net gain in less than a week, and an equally impressive five-point net gain in job approval in just a single day (thank you, Bill Clinton?).
Conservatives, predictably, seized on this morning's jobs report, with many insisting that this will smother any convention bounce in the crib. The weekend will tell us for sure, but there is reason to believe that they are wrong. After all, this jobs report, while still not the type of growth either the president or the nation was hoping for, was better than three of the four preceding reports, and the polls were unaffected by none of those previous soft employment reports. In April, May, and June, job growth was slower than in August. And the net impact, in the Gallup daily tracking poll, was muted, at best. And the one month that showed any movement of size immediately bounced back:
Gallup margin for the sample for the week before April jobs report: Obama +0
Gallup margin for the sample for the week after April jobs report: Romney +1
Gallup margin for the sample two weeks after April jobs report: Romney +1
Gallup margin for the sample for the week before May jobs report: Romney +1
Gallup margin for the sample for the week after May jobs report: Obama +1
Gallup margin for the sample two weeks after May jobs report: Obama +1
Gallup margin for the sample for the week before June jobs report: Obama +4
Gallup margin for the sample for the week after June jobs report: Obama +0
Gallup margin for the sample two weeks after June jobs report: Obama +4
Now, with this report getting more media attention, there may well be a difference. But the media attention is mixed, and some will hear the jobs number, and some will hear a drop from 8.3 to 8.1 percent. Plus, some will hear job growth of any kind and not know (or care) what analysts expectations are.
But the conservative wet dream that this single jobs report will elect Mitt Romney is not supported by any data to date, while the liberal dream that Barack Obama will leave Charlotte with a legitimate bounce is actually, at this relatively early stage, much better supported by available data.
In other polling news: