Not by historical standards, maybe -- but then they don't make 'em like they used to.
Frank Newport, Gallup's head of polling, has a post up talking about today's tracking results, which show a 3 point bump in Obama's approval rating, taking it to 52% -- the highest point since the Bin Laden kill.
Oddly, Gallup's site just crashed (overloaded,or DOS attack?) so I can't post the link. But the numbers have been posted on RCP.
Anyway, Obama's bump in the head-to-head was just a single point. But Newport goes out of his way to note that the head-to-head is a seven-day roll, while the approval is only a three-day roll. Thus, whatever happened in last night's polling (after the Big Dog's speech, but mostly before Obama's) had a relatively large effect on the approval number, but a relatively smaller effect on the head-to-head.
Even in a three-day roll, last night must have been pretty good for Team Obama to move the approval number that much. Obviously, if those gains are held beyond last night, the impact on the head-to-head number will grow over the next few days, as the pre-convention polling nights continue to roll off.
Newport also went out of his way to point out that Romney received virtually no bounce from the GOP convention -- which suggests to me that he's expecting Obama to end up back in front by at least a couple of points, or maybe more, when the dust settles.
The fact that Scott "Fox News" Rasmussen also shows Obama gaining three points since the DNC started -- though still trailing Rmoney by 1 point -- tends to confirm that Obama has indeed gotten a respectable (by modern standards, at least) bump.
Of course, today's semi-crummy jobs report could quickly take the fizz out. But, for now, it looks like we're back to the pre-convention status quo: Obama narrowly leading nationally, and probably by a bit more in the swing states.
On to the debates.
Update 2:39 EST: OK Gallup is back up and here's the link to Newport's post.