Obama's Approval Rating Jumps After DNC

     It's not really debatable that the DNC was better than the RNC last week. Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman, admits it:

   "Many of those same Republicans are in no mood to hear how badly their party was outperformed by the Democrats this week during the prime-time performances that millions of Americans watched."

   "Republicans should be particularly glum this weekend. The further Democrats progressed into their convention this week in Charlotte, N.C., the more glaring the shortcomings of last week’s GOP convention became. By the time the last of the confetti fell on the Democratic convention floor, it became frustratingly clear that the most compelling speaker in Tampa, Fla., had been Clint Eastwood’s chair.

   "But while Obama said nothing new, he said it much better than when Gov. Romney said nothing in Tampa. And you could tell by the boisterous reaction of Democratic delegates who left the arena Thursday night looking fired up and ready to go. Maybe there seemed to be such a disparity between the two conventions because the Republican Party has never been the least bit excited about its nominee. Or maybe it’s because Democrats were simply blessed with a deeper bench of political athletes in 2012. But whatever the reason, Republicans were lapped by their rivals and may ultimately pay in November for botching Mitt Romney’s debut."

   "And that means that these conventions will have mattered — a lot."

   Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/80910_Page2.html#ixzz25oZThQMv

     Romney's team went into last week saying they had to have set the world on fire in Tampa and now are saying they'll have to set the world on fire in the debates. However, no one even saw the debates as a big deal prior to the non-event the Tampa convention was. Before that everyone was admitting that Romney is unlikely to move mountains in the debates. That's now been revised to he will move mountains in the debates.

   The RNC in Tampa last week made Romney just the third candidate since 1964 to have no convention bounce-the other two say it all: George McGovern and John Kerry. Romney actually lost a point in the Gallup poll, making him only the second to actually lose ground-Kerry also lost a point.

    The whole effect of this week isn't clear yet, but already we see what Scarborough is talking about:
  
    "President Obama gets a 52 percent approval rating against 43 percent disapproval in Gallup's daily tracking poll, which surveys 500 Americans a night and averages three days of data. The current tracking poll samples the nights of the Democratic National Convention and represents a major jump for Obama, who has basically been running even on approval in tracking and other major national polls, if not a little underwater."

    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/gallup-obama-approval-jumps-after-dnc

    This also suggests that David Plouffe was managing expectations yesterday when he cautioned against a large bounce.

     The Gallup polling has actually been throughout this election season particularly resistant to any traction or movement. The President also gained another point against Romney in a head to head, This poll had largely been frozen for months.

    It will be interesting to see what the numbers look like after a few days for things to sink in more as well as other polls that have not been as frozen as Gallup has been.