Bounce!

The big question among cable news hosts and the ego-driven dopes like me who sit in small rooms staring into a television camera trying to sound smart is: Who got a "bounce" out of their convention and how much was it?

Tradition holds that the party in power gets to go second. That is why this year - with George W. Bush in the White House - Barack Obama had to his convention before John McCain had his.

Eight years ago, Al Gore - going second because Bill Clinton was in the White House - laid a shockingly manly kiss on Tipper and then gave a great speech at the end of his convention in Los Angeles. The lead that Governor George Bush had built coming out of his convention in Philadelphia immediately shrunk to zero - a tie which lasted until about the middle of December, as we remember all too well.

This year, we watched Barack Obama, unable to put any distance between him and the GOP candidate, fold up like a cheap suitcase and pick Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate.

Obama had a really good convention in Denver. The Clintons got A's for deportment. The production was first rate. Obama's speech lacked only the entire contents of Mile High Stadium being tele-ported to the Hale-Bopp Comet but other than that it was very, very effective.

On Friday morning, following that speech, McCain dropped an atomic bomb on the Obama/Biden victory lap by announcing Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Nevertheless, by Monday of last week - which was to have been the first night of the GOP Convention in St. Paul - Obama/Biden had opened up an eight-point lead over McCain 50-42 in the Gallup Tracking Poll.

SIDEBAR:

A tracking poll is an ongoing sampling of opinion. In the case of the Gallup organization they interview 1,000 people each night and report the average of the results results over five nights of polling.

Every day, the sixth previous night of polling "rolls off" and you get the average of the most recent five nights.

See how this works?

END SIDEBAR

You may remember that, because of Hurricane Gustav bearing down on New Orleans, the GOP cancelled the first night of its convention so there was no counter to the Obama Bounce. After Monday night's polling, Obama still had a seven-point lead in the Gallup Track 49-42.

I am going into screechingly boring detail about this because as of yesterday, the Gallup Track had gone from Obama +8 to McCain +3 a convention bounce of 11 percentage points for McCain/Palin.

I was shocked that the Obama campaign didn't plan some blockbuster announcement for last Friday - the day after the McCain convention, to step on his victory lap with Gov. Palin. Could this be a crack in the vaunted Obama campaign tactics? They couldn't think of anything which could compare to the Palin announcement of a week before?

Getting back to the polls announced over the weekend, Rasmussen's three-day track has the race tied as does the CBS poll. CNN's poll - which was in the field before the GOP convention started - has Obama +1. The Hotline Tracking Poll is the odd-man-out showing Obama with a six point lead.

LATE BREAKING: After I had finished writing this column, USA Today posted the results of its latest poll showing McCain leading Obama by a shocking TEN PERCENTAGE POINTS.

SIDEBAR II

I believe we have discussed this before, but it bears repeating.

Treat political polls like figure skating used to be scored at the Olympics: Throw out the high and the low scores on the theory that the French and the East Germans were cheating.

Whatever is left, is probably pretty close to the truth.

END SIDEBAR II

Point of personal privilege: The Lad and Ladette are participating in the Leukemia/Lymphoma Cup, a regatta to be held in San Francisco Bay, October 5th, raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Blood cancers touch families across the country every day and the LLS has done some great things to provide treatment and research. More than 85% of every dollar goes straight to patients and services to support them. If you like, please click on this link to support them and their efforts."

Thank you.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Gallup Tracking Poll page and the USA Today poll; also another in the highly touted series of license plates and a Catchy Caption of the day which has a beach volleyball player that I have been waiting to use for four years.