Obama Is Getting A Convention Bump

The above graph is from the website of the esteemed poll analyst Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight.com). Just a week ago, Silver had President Obama's chances of being re-elected at about 75%. But after looking at all the post-convention polls, he has now raised that to an 80.7% chance of re-election, and now predicts the president will win about 319 electoral votes (11 more than he was predicting last week). Here are the four post-convention polls released so far:

 CNN/OPINION RESEARCH (9/7 to 9/9)
Obama...............52%
Romney...............46%

GALLUP POLL (Monday, 7-day tracking)
Obama...............49%
Romney...............44%

RASMUSSEN POLL (Monday, 3-day tracking)
Obama...............50%
Romney...............45%

IBD/CSM/TIPP POLL (9/4 to 9/9)
Obama...............46%
Romney...............44%

Note that three of the four polls show Obama with a lead beyond the margin of error. While the third poll is within the margin of error, much of its polling was done before the end of the convention. There seems to be little doubt that President Obama is starting to show a significant convention bounce in the polls, and this may even increase more in the coming days as more polls are released (and people begin to compare what they saw at the two conventions).

There are still a couple of months (and three presidential debates) to go before election day, and things could always change. And much of the outcome will be determined by who gets out the vote better. Still, things are starting to look up for the president.