Post Conventions Analysis Rolls In

This past Tuesday, Obama’s bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage. Before the two conventions were held, Obama had consistently held a one or two point lead over McCain for most of August (see recent daily results).

Tracking Poll results are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, tomorrow (Monday) will be the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after McCain’s speech. By Tuesday or Wednesday, the net impact of both political conventions should be fairly clear.

McCain earns the vote from 89% of Republicans while Obama is supported by 81% of Democrats. McCain also manages to attract 15% of Democrats while Obama gets 9% of the Republican vote. Voters not affiliated with either major party remain fairly evenly divided between the two men.

Source: Rasmussen

I will be very interested to see how the numbers stack up Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as we roll into numbers past both conventions.

In related news...people who watched Obama's Invesco Temple Speech had a different reaction than those who watched on TV:

How Obama lost the election

Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last week seemed vastly different from the stands of this city’s Invesco Stadium than it did to the 40 million who saw it on television. Melancholy hung like thick smog over the reserved seats where I sat with Democratic Party staffers. The crowd, of course, cheered mechanically at the tag lines, flourished placards, and even rose for the obligatory wave around the stadium. But its mood was sour. The air carried the acrid smell of defeat, and the crowd took shallow breaths. Even the appearance of R&B great Stevie Wonder failed to get the blood pumping.

The speech itself dragged on for three-quarters of an hour. As David S Broder wrote in the Washington Post: “[Obama's] recital of a long list of domestic promises could have been delivered by

any Democratic nominee from Walter Mondale to John Kerry. There was no theme music to the speech and really no phrase or sentence that is likely to linger in the memory of any listener. The thing I never expected did in fact occur: Al Gore, the famously wooden former vice president, gave a more lively and convincing speech than Obama did.”

On television, Obama’s spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats. The professionals I sat with were Hillary Clinton people, to be sure, and had reason to sulk, for an Obama victory might do them little good in any event.

The Democrats were watching the brightest and most articulate presidential candidate they have fielded since John F Kennedy snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And this was before John McCain, in a maneuver worthy of Admiral Chester Nimitz at the Battle of Midway, turned tables on the Democrats’ strategy with the choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Source: Asia Times

Hat Tip: Race 4 2008 (there are many more links on this post for other stories)