Certainly there is the case that it is based on the Gallup poll. Yesterday in fact it reverted to a flat tie of 47% each for the President and Mitt Romney. And the Rasmussen poll had showed it revert last week.
Give Karl Rove credit. He certainly is good at looking at the glass as half full-for Romney. He used this to argue that the convention bounce is over:
"Mr. Romney's comments about Americans who don't pay taxes were, as he admitted during a Monday press conference, "inelegant." But every campaign has its awkward moments that the media magnify. Mr. Obama had his after saying on July 13, "You didn't build that." For a while thereafter, Team Obama could do little right. Then it passed."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444165804578006340735101824.html
It's a pretty tenuous analogy to say the least. The "You didn't build that" flap, wholly contrived by the Right was always based on taking the President out of context. I'm not sure on what basis Rove claims that Team Obama could do nothing right "for a while."
Actually if you reset to July, you'll remember that it was Romney who mostly couldn't do anything right. He was dogged by questions about why he won't release his tax returns. Then he had his infamous trip where he insulted his foreign guests, insulted the Arab people-note that he did the same thing again in his "We are the 53%" video-and Rick Gorka told the media to kiss his ass.
At the time Paul Ryan's selection was meant to be another game changer-things were going so badly for him that he thought he would turn down the heat by embracing Ryan's Medicare privatization scheme.
So the President didn't actually have the tough July Rove seems to recall. While the GOP got a convention scheme out of it-ie, based on a lie-there was never any sign that it actually hurt Obama, certainly we never saw it hurt him in the polls, much less down ballot Democrats like we're seeing with Romney this month.
Listen, Rove has a tough job here. His task is to buck up the GOP. He has to somehow talk them down off the ledge without seeming to totally deny reality. Here he does a fair job:
"This moment, too, will pass for Mr. Romney. More important, the past week's events have not significantly altered the contours of the race. A month ago, Gallup had Mr. Obama at 45% and Mr. Romney at 47%. On Wednesday, Gallup reported 47% for Obama, 46% for Romney. A month ago Rasmussen said it was 45% for Mr. Obama, 43% for Mr. Romney. In its Wednesday poll, Rasmussen reported 46% for Obama, 47% for Romney."
This sounds good. I mean Gallup and Rasmussen, two polls that go by longer rolling averages show a dead heat. So there's no problem! We'll forget about Romney's donor video in a few days!
This is why Rove is a master of his craft. Talk about a spin job! The reality is that this video will be played again and again every day until November 6.
The polls seem impressive until you realize how misleading they are. He mentions nothing about state polls that are all showing Obama leading by healthy margins in most swing states. And Gallup and Rasmussen are at this point, outliers.
Nate Silver is out with a new piece that shows there is lots of strong evidence to suggest the President's bounce is actually not fading. For one thing the polls like Rasmussen that use robo calls and don't cal cell phone users tend to be biased against Democrats-cell phone users are part of the 47%; so why poll them?
Then again Rasmussen actually showed the President up yesterday by 3 points
"But isn’t Mr. Obama’s convention bounce declining already? It sure seemed to be the case a couple of days ago — but now the evidence has become more ambiguous."
"The most powerful argument that Mr. Obama’s convention bounce is fading — or perhaps has already faded — is the Gallup national tracking poll, which showed the race reverting to a tie on Thursday after once having given Mr. Obama a seven-point lead."
"Gallup is one of four national tracking polls, however, and the others tell a variety of stories, none of which are exactly consistent."
"In the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, Mr. Obama’s numbers faded sharply late last week, but they have since rebounded. In Thursday’s version of that poll, he held a three-point lead over Mr. Romney when voters who leaned toward a candidate were included."
"In the Ipsos online tracking poll, Mr. Obama’s numbers have fluctuated some, but he remains five points ahead among likely voters — only slightly off his peak. (The survey also put Mr. Obama 10 points ahead among the broader universe of registered voters.)"
"In the RAND Corporation’s tracking poll, Mr. Obama lead has expanded slowly but steadily. In fact, he reached his highest level of the year on Thursday, with the survey giving him a 5.4 percentage point advantage among likely voters."
"A simple average of the four tracking polls put Mr. Obama 3.4 percentage points ahead on Thursday. That is essentially no different than a week ago, when the same technique gave him a 3.5-point lead."
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/sept-20-obamas-convention-bounce-may-not-be-receding/
At this point, the discussion about Romney is almost besides the point. He's getting hammered. What's really worrisome is the extent to which this seems to be hurting candidates down the ballot. Romney may have coattails, all right, coattails that pull the rest of the party down.
Nate himself, yesterday suggested that if this Senate problem is real-his 538 forecast now gives the Democrats an almost 80% chance of holding onto the Senate-a month ago this was only 39%.
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