As the polls change, will the story change too?

Following the Republican convention, the polls are all moving towards the McCain Palin ticket. Today's Gallup tracking poll shows McCain ahead by 3, while the Rasmussen tracking poll shows a tie. By tomorrow, they both should have the full Republican bounce and will probably both show a McCain lead. For months now, the media story has been how this is a Democratic year and how Obama has had a lead albeit reduced. Few stories have mentioned the fact that pre-convention polls are notoriously inaccurate. When Obama's convention bounce was smaller than normal, the stories spun that rise as being more in keeping with recent experience; in other words, the bounces from conventions have been getting much smaller.

Now, we have a bounce out of the Republican convention which is not small. Just before the convention, Gallup had Obama up by 8 and now he is down by 3 and the full bounce is not yet manifested in the results. That is an eleven point bounce with more to come. What will be made of the fact that McCain got a much larger bounce from his convention than Obama did? My suspicion is that we will now see a raft of stories in the media discussing how the debates will be all important for the race to settle into a pattern and how the polls after the convention are of little value until the first debate has happened. We will see what happens.

The truth is that polls really are of little value at this point except to show the trend of the race. Begining with the Democratic convention, however, the worth of the polls began to rise, and this increased relevance will grow until mid October. At that point, with essentially all likely voters paying attention, the polls will be truly predictive. Still, it is extremely impressive and a positive indicator for the Republicans that they have been able to move ahead at this point. The real message to take away from these polls is this: Senator Obama may have great oratorical skills, but he still has not been able to close the sale with the American people. Indeed, right now, it looks like a substantial number of those previously sold are standing in the "returns" line. By playing it safe with the Biden pick and his convention speech, Senator Obama has put himself into a hole. He may be able to get out of it, but he needs to do something soon or he will simply sink deeper and deeper. After all, despite the seemingly endless campaign, millions of Americans know little or nothing about Barak Obama. If they come to see him as the Republicans portrayed him at their convention, his campaign will be toast.