It's Official: No Convention Bounce For Romney

     An earlier Reuters/Ipso poll along with a preliminary Gallup poll had strongly suggested it. Now a new Gallup poll makes it official: there was convention bounce for Romney. He doesn't exactly join illustrious company here:

    "The lack of a bounce is consistent with Gallup's immediate post-GOP convention reaction poll, showing Americans giving Romney's acceptance speech, and the convention more generally, rather muted ratings.
Gallup's standard seven-day rolling average of voter presidential preferences has shown Obama at 47% and Romney at 46% each day since Aug. 29. That is a slight shift in Obama's favor, as Romney held a consistent two-percentage-point advantage for nine days in mid-August, shortly after announcing Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate. That was the longest period in Gallup Daily tracking showing Romney with any kind of edge. The candidates have been closely matched since Gallup began Daily tracking in April, apart from a few brief periods showing a Romney advantage (mid-April and mid-August) or an Obama advantage (late April and late June/early July)."

      http://www.gallup.com/poll/157262/romney-gets-no-bounce-last-week-gop-convention.aspx

     So he actually lost a point. This puts him in exactly the wrong kind of company:

     "Past presidential nominees have seen their support among registered voters increase five points on average after their party's nominating convention, according to Gallup's review of the history of convention bounces going back to 1964."

     "Romney becomes one of three recent nominees -- and the first Republican -- who did not receive a convention bounce, joining George McGovern in 1972 and John Kerry in 2004. Both McGovern and Kerry, like Romney, challenged incumbent presidents, with McGovern suffering a landslide defeat to Richard Nixon and Kerry losing a close election to George W. Bush."

     This race has taken a good deal of the appearance of the Bush-Kerry 2004 campaign. Obama like Bush in 2004, defined Romney early and like with Kerry these attacks have tended to stick. While Republicans hate Obama like Dems did Bush in 2004 this hasn't translated into the polls.

     Romney has basically never led. But to actually lose a point is too dead on-Kerry too lost a point in 2004. That's got to be a little erie for the Romney team.

     While they will try to put a brave face on this, they had put a lot of stock on last week's convention. What do they do now? What is the event that's going to give Romney some momentum?

      Overall, the odds are very much in the President's favor at this point. It was Romney who needed to move the needle. The Dems are pretty much in ideal position going into tonight.

      Incumbent Presidents don't lose elections. I know this seems to be too categorical. We have many Presidents to get kicked out of office after one term. However, on closer inspection this is only true of Presidents primaried by their own party.

      If you bear that caveat in mind incumbent Presidents don't lose-when was the last President to lose without being primaried? I'm actually not sure-maybe Hoover himself. Every President since then that lost was primaried.