...and is this a real bounce or just a blip, an anomaly?
Gallup Daily tracking reported Friday that Obama holds a 49 percent to 41 percent lead.
When the Democratic convention began, the candidates were knotted up at 45. Thursday, Obama had gained 6 points in the polls. Friday's results — which include three days of phone surveys from Tuesday to Thursday — show that lead increasing by two more points.
That bounce does not include any potential effect of Obama’s much-hyped and widely praised convention speech Thursday night.
The Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll also finds that Obama has taken his greatest lead since July. Rasmussen pegs Obama with 46 percent of the vote to McCain’s 43 percent, a lead that expands to 49 percent to 45 percent when “leaners†are included. Rasmussen’s latest poll also was conducted too early to show any effect from Obama’s acceptance speech.
There were some early indications, though, that Obama’s speech may have enhanced his public appeal. The Democratic polling firm Democracy Corps tracked undecided voters in Nevada as they viewed Obama’s acceptance speech. Follow-up focus groups revealed that one in four so-called swing voters who had been leaning to McCain moved to undecided, and one in four who had been undecided moved to favoring Obama.
But the first national surveys following Obama’s speech will not be available until Saturday.
For Obama, who came into this convention facing down high expectations, the polling indicates that he has so far slightly bettered the baseline for a convention bounce.
...Gallup’s tracking from Monday to Wednesday, when Obama's 6-point bounce first appeared, indicated that Obama’s gains were largely due to increased favor among conservative Democrats. Those same Democrats are more likely to be onetime Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. Palin’s status as potentially the first female vice president could draw some Clintonites — particularly middle-aged or older white women — away from the Democratic ticket.
It remains to be seen if adding Palin to the ticket will have a long-term effect in the polls. Walter Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 may have been historic — marking the first time a woman ran on the ticket of either major party — but after a 9-point post-convention bounce, the Democratic ticket went nowhere fast.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080829/pl_politico/12986;_ylt=AruOB1Uybupx.WzUo5.xuX2_w5R4
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