No 'convention bounce' for Romney?

No matter where you look, it seems like Romney didn’t gain much ground in the days following the Republican National Convention– at least not yet.

Gallup polls use seven-day rolling averages of registered voters, and the polls for the week of Aug. 26 through Sept. 1 show Romney at 46 percent and Obama at 47 percent– right around where they’ve been for almost the entire polling period since April.

As Gallup’s Editor-in-Chief interprets the polls, the Republican convention has had “no impact” so far, though that may change as the next round of polls comes out today. Current polls cover the period during the convention and just two days following, and many experts believe you need more time following the convention to get an accurate reading on the convention’s influence.

One interesting piece of information that Gallup tallied from the convention was positive voter response to the Romney speech, which the polling site claims was the lowest rated speech they’ve monitored since 1996. Republicans “overwhelmingly” said the convention confirmed their vote for Romney, while Democrats felt the opposite, but it left a majority –36 percent– of Independents saying they would vote for the former governor.

Other sites with post-convention data have similar results in terms of convention impact. An average of RealClearPolitics.com polls created by Wall Street Journal list Obama and Romney in a dead heat at 46.4 percent, though Romney was up less than a whole point since the convention began.

The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog tallies popular vote percentages with both candidates, and they show Romney with a .1 percentage point gain in that category since Aug. 27, the first day of the convention. Obama had no gain in that time, but he leads with 50 percent of the popular vote.

However, analysis done by the blog said the convention has given Romney a bounce– though a below-average one. By comparing polls that show Romney way ahead– by up to 6 percentage points– and ones that show a “negative bounce” of up to two points, Nate Silver estimates Romney’s bounce to be at 2 and a half points.

This is a lower than average convention bounce– actually, the third-smallest for a non-incumbent since 1968– but Obama himself got an even smaller bounce in 2008.

Look out for polling completed after the convention has been over for four days or so to get a better reading. And of course, we won’t know the individual convention’s real impact until both conventions are over.