Palin Factor in New Gallup Poll with Obama 6-Point Lead?

A new Gallup Daily tracking poll taken after the Democratic convention and after Republican Senator John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate shows Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s lead down two points. Obama now has a 6 point lead.

Both Gallup and a website that analyzes polls suggest this means (1) Obama didn’t get much of a convention bounce but it’s hard to judge given the rapidity of McCain’s Veep announcement, (2) McCain’s Palin pick didn’t give him an out-of-the-ordinary Vice Presidential pick bounce, and (3) if the Palin pick is factored in, Democrats shouldn’t be too upset because Obama seemingly held up fairly well.

Gallup:

Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 28-30, including two days of interviewing since the close of the Democratic National Convention, finds Barack Obama with a six percentage point lead over John McCain in the presidential contest, 48% to 42%.

Though down slightly from the eight-point lead Obama held mid-convention, this represents a clear improvement for the Democratic candidate’s positioning in the campaign compared to a week ago when the race was about tied. The last Gallup update conducted entirely before Obama’s convention and vice presidential announcement was based on interviews conducted Aug. 20-22, and showed Obama up by two points, 46% to 44%.

As the recent trend shows, Obama did not gain any additional support in the poll since his generally well-reviewed acceptance speech on Thursday night. However, the Aug. 28-30 field period also includes two days of interviewing since the Friday morning announcement by McCain that he has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to join him on the Republican ticket. Thus, it is unclear whether the full positive impact on national voters of the Democratic convention or Obama’s speech would have been greater if not for the Palin announcement.

Gallup says that just as Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as Veep didn’t produce a visible bump, McCain could find that Palin’s selection hasn’t altered the basics for him, either. What does this and other polls mean? FiveThirtyEight has an intriguing analysis and here’s part of it:

Under typical conditions, we would expect the convention bounce to slightly increase, rather than decrease, as we headed into the weekend after the convention. As such, our model now regards Obama as having a slightly-below-average convention bounce. Obama now leads in the Gallup and Rasmussen trackers by an average of 4.5 points. In the week before the convention began, he had led in those polls by an average of 1.2 points. So, that represents a convention bounce of 3.3 points — below the over-under number of 6.

On the other hand, there has never before been a circumstance in which the opposing party’s VP has been named immediately after the convention, an event which often produces a bounce of its own. If a typical VP bounce is 5 points, and McCain has received that VP bounce by having named Sarah Palin to his ticket, Obama can be regarded as having had an above-average convention bounce (an 8.3-point convention bounce, counteracted by a 5-point McCain VP bounce).

All of this is academic, really, since all of these bounces will fade. I just wanted to emphasize the point that, because our model adjusts for the convention bounce but not the VP bounce, it is probably lowballing Obama’s numbers a bit at this point. By this time next week, when the GOP has had a convention of its own, we will be in a better position to evaluate the state of the race. I would recommend that you take our numbers with a grain of salt in the interim.

Palin’s selection could clearly do three things:

(1) Energize the GOP’s social conservative base, which it clearly has already.
(2) Attract women who don’t favor abortion. Not all women are pro-choice. There are signs of this already.
(3) Attract some Hillary Clinton voters.

The third likely impact is a distinct possibility — so distinct that the New York Times reports that an irked Hillary Clinton may play a greater role in the campaign than she originally planned:

Mrs. Clinton’s friends said she was galled that Ms. Palin might try to capitalize on a movement that Mrs. Clinton, of New York, built among women in the primaries. And Democrats used strong words on Sunday to rebut the notion: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that women would not be “seduced” by the Republican ticket, and Guy Cecil, the former political director of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, said it was “insulting” for Republicans to compare Ms. Palin to Mrs. Clinton.

Nevertheless, Clinton advisers said they expected that a bloc of her female supporters would give Mr. McCain a second look because of Ms. Palin, and that Mrs. Clinton was probably Mr. Obama’s best weapon in response. But asked if the Palin pick would lead to a new political marriage between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, a senior Clinton adviser, Ann Lewis, said: “Not a political marriage. She is not on the ticket. Senator Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Hillary will do what she can to help.”

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they expected that in light of the Palin selection, she would focus her efforts especially on working women — middle- and working-class, married and single — in swing states where she ran strong, like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Times reports that Obama’s advisers reject the view that Palin could get some Clinton supporters, which seems like spin. But, the paper reports, Clinton’s advisers give a more “nuanced” opinion– noting that some Hillary fans wouldn’t vote for a GOPer like Palin no matter what but some may indeed be open to voting for her.

Mr. Cecil said the Palin pick would most likely increase the number of Mrs. Clinton’s appearances on the campaign trail, on television and at fund-raisers on behalf of the Democratic ticket. He added that Mrs. Clinton would probably spend “a good deal of time in battleground states, particularly in the suburbs where the race is often won and lost.”

In other words: present polls show a snapshot of a recently-reconstituted race. Given Palin’s potential to attract both social conservatives and some alienated Clinton supporters willing to set aside issues such as the next Supreme Court, the race could change dramatically if Palin catches fire — or catches on fire.