It remains too early to tell exactly what effect the Republican National Convention has had on the polls. But television ratings are one measure that come in almost instantaneously. Ratings for the final two nights of the Republican convention were down quite a bit from 2008, declining by about 30 percent overall. …Nate Silver, 538,NYT
There are some externals that may account for this, at least in part. Isaac, for example. Or it could find and echo in the extent of Romney’s “bounce.”
Nate Silver goes over the polls, finding a little turn this way, a slight turn the other way.
For the time being, I’m feeling pretty good about my guess that Mr. Romney’s bounce will come in somewhere in the neighborhood of four percentage points. It was a smartly scripted and competently executed convention (Clint Eastwood’s cameo aside) but also not one that packed a lot of excitement or surprise value. In other words, it felt pretty much par for the course given how conventions are run these days.
If Mr. Romney gets a four-point polling bounce, we’d expect him to lead Mr. Obama by about two percentage points in national polls conducted between Tampa and Charlotte, N.C., since he had trailed Mr. Obama by about that margin before the Republican convention began.
The forecast model has been a bit bullish on Mr. Obama’s chances lately. It now gives him a 72 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, his highest figure since Aug. 12. However, that mostly reflects some relatively favorable economic reports from among the economic data series that we track rather than anything having to do with the convention. …Nate Silver, 538,NYT
In other words, onward to Charlotte. And post-Charlotte. And subsequent economic reports.