Little Room to Bounce

At least one recent poll suggests Mitt Romney got the traditional convention bounce from the GOP gathering in Tampa.

But not much of a bounce.

According to the Reuters-Ipsos poll:

Romney leads with 44 percent support, compared with 42 percent for Obama, according to a Reuters-Ipsos national tracking poll released Thursday.

The Republican candidate started the week trailing Obama 46 to 42 percent. The swing of 6 percentage points is likely due to voter focus on the Republican National Convention, which concludes Thursday night in Tampa, Fla.

There may be a bit more of a bounce now that Romney did a good acceptance speech and Clint Eastwood finished mumbling at an empty chair.  The lede, as many point out, is that Romney slipped ahead of Obama.

Keep in mind that the poll above is an online poll.  I'll reserve judgement until a more traditional poll arrives on the scene.  But you expect a bounce.  There's just not much room to bounce right now, given how few "undecided" voters appear to be out there. And of course the Democrats get their chance to bounce back, so to speak, with their own convention.  That assumes anyone is watching.

Nate Silver, the guru of all that is polling over at 538, has a nice piece on measuring the convention bounce. Worth the time, especially if you're like me and love a good regression analysis.  And he makes this point at the end of his column:

Still, the forecast is our signature product. We expect the convention bounces to be small this year. But if Mr. Romney gets no convention bounce at all, or a bounce of only one or two percentage points, it will be appropriate to take a more pessimistic view of his chances of winning in November.