Are we ready for the Monday-morning panic...?

I ask this because it's almost certain that the tracking poll results coming out today will be worse than they were yesterday.

The reason is not that McCain will have gained any more in the most recent round of polling (although he may have), but because the last pre-bounce day (i.e. Thursday, the last day showing an Obama lead) will fall out of the rolling average. From what various analysts have been able to divine about each day's totals, even if McCain were to only win yesterday by about 1.6 percent (a steep drop from the last two days, and a sign that the bounce might be fading faster than usual), that plus the loss of Thursday's data would be enough to make McCain's Gallup lead appear to increase, going from 3 to 4 points.

I would personally guesstimate that tomorrow's results are likely to show McCain increasing his Gallup lead to 5 or maybe 6 points, and taking a Rasmussen lead of around 3. These are no more than what would be expected from the average convention bounce, and are likely to hang around until this weekend's numbers pass out of the average (for the results issued Thursday morning). At that point, it would be reasonable to start seeing McCain's lead slowly decreasing over the next week or two.

In other words, if you see results like I predict above...don't panic. (Although I know you will anyway.)

Obama's got it covered.

Either we trust him or we don't. He's got to run the country, right? IF he can run the country, he can run a campaign.

If you can trust Obama to run our country, how can you not trust him to run his campaign?

:eyes:

Cool as a cucumber here...

:thumbsup: Thanks!

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The reason I think it will take longer is based on Nate Silver's analysis of convention bounces over at 538.com yesterday. When taken in isolation (i.e. not for the Democratic convention, which had the Republicans start theirs four days later), a bounce tends to go up sharply until about six days after the convention starts (i.e. this past weekend), then slowly tapers off over a period of up to four weeks. When you try to map two conventions going in opposite directions a week apart, the matter becomes a lot more unpredictable -- but Silver guesses that any McCain bounce will reach its peak around now, hang around with only a slight decline through around the 21st, then drop more quickly thereafter. Of course, if it were to fade away quicker than that, it would be a good sign for our side.

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For the past week-plus, I've been warning people here that McCain would likely be ahead after this weekend, and that it was nothing to worry about. In return, I got called "Poindexter" and accused of being a "concern troll" (which, it seems obvious, was the exact opposite of what I intended). So, when exactly what I had been predicting as nothing to worry about took place, it was time for all the Chicken Littles to come out of the woodwork. :eyes:

I agree that the four-week bounce decay seems weird -- in fact, when I started out, I predicted the bounce would be completely over in a week, or two at the most. (I also assumed the peak of the bounce would be the mornings after the VP and Presidential acceptance speeches.) It was only after I found FiveThirtyEight.com that I discovered that people had been doing an extended analysis of past conventions, and discovered that the bounce usually peaked six days after the start of the convention -- building for a couple of days after the nominee's speech -- and took almost a month to completely go away.

Of course, as Nate Silver himself admits, that four-week window may in part have been because most conventions of the past took place in the summer, where there was no political news in the month or so between the conventions. He cautions that unexpected political events that appear to push the convention back into the past (as the Palin announcement did with Obama's acceptance speech) can make bounces appear to go away sooner. But, as it stands right now, the next political "game changer" event will be the first presidential debate on 9/26 (which would be, coincidentally, when Silver predicts the RNC bounce would be pretty much faded away). I would say that the results following that debate will be the first time we can gather whether we're doing well or playing from behind. Although, as I pointed out in my earlier reply, if McCain's bounce fades sooner, that can only mean good things for us.

This will even out and it'll be closer. Even if McCain stays up by a few points the debates will get Obama back up with him .

But in the electoral college, Obama looks to hold all of Kerry's states. Plus he has Iowa in the bag, and probably New Mexico as well. Plus several are in play, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Montana, The Dakotas, New Hampshire. It looks good, it really does.

I can take it.

This is in the game plan for the Main Stream Media. The MSM is playing the voting public like a fiddle here.
They keep the polls showing the election as being close in order to keep viewership high. If the election was an Obama blow out, no body would watch the news. If Obama is shown correctly at +10%, all the Republicans would just turn off their televisions. If the MSM has no viewers, the don't sell advertising time.

I expect to see several lead changes, When some big story like a hurricane blows through, watch for a big change in the polls. The MSM is working hard to keep this election at the top of the news cycle.

It might have been nicer if you'd skipped the gratuitous insult at the end, and assumed instead that we would learn from the info you told us.

Do you really think, after this weekend, that we won't see a replay of the flood of "the sky is falling!!!" threads if McCain is still leading in today's polls?

If so, I hope you're right.

However, listening to the Morning Joe people tout McCain being ahead 54-44% (USA Today/Gallup) among likely voters is a somewhat disheartening way to get ready for my work week.

...USAToday/Gallup's "likely voter" model is seriously FUBAR, something that has already been concluded through anomalous results earlier in the year. (And backed up, it turns out, by the fact that their "likely voter" this time around would prefer, by about a 50-42 margin, that Republicans retake Congress as well.)

Ignore that unlikely result, and you'll find McCain leading in RVs by 50-46, not that much different from the 3 points of their daily tracking poll (remember, I predicted a 5-6 point lead for McCain in that very poll this morning), and not at all surprising for a survey taken at the predicted height of a convention bounce.