A heads-up, bounce-watchers: Measuring President Bush’s convention bump is going to be a tricky bit of business, thanks to the Labor Day weekend.
Bush gives his acceptance speech the evening of Sept. 2, and on Sept. 3, millions of Americans head out for one last end-of-summer fling, making it tough on pollsters to find people at home for those postconvention surveys.
If Kerry’s convention is any guide, there may not be much of a bump to measure. Seven major media polls registered anywhere from a 1 percentage point drop to a
4 percentage point uptick in support for the Democratic nominee among registered voters.
This left Kerry with a modest lead, three to seven points, in all but one of the seven surveys.
The exception was the Gallup poll, which found Bush up by 1 percentage point in a three-way race among registered voters. (The average bump up for modern presidents is somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 percentage points.)
