How's That GOP Convention Bounce?

Kevin Drum on The Incredible Vanishing GOP Convention Bounce. "What I found most interesting is that aside from two outliers with gigantic bounces, every convention has produced a bounce of about 15 percentage points. Every convention, that is, until you get to Republican conventions in the Bush era and beyond. Ever since W stamped his imprint on the GOP, their convention bounces have been nearly invisible. Apparently, putting themselves on display to the American public simply doesn't make a positive impression anymore."



"In other news, Gallup reports that Romney's acceptance speech was the most poorly received of any speech since they started keeping track in 1996. In fact, it wasn't even close. The net positive rating for Romney was nine points lower than the previous worst speaker (John McCain) and a full 13 points lower than the pre-Romney average. Ouch."

Ezra Klein has the tables in Gallup: The Republican Convention was a bust

Nate Silver tackles the 'Are you better of than you were four years ago' question, In Looking Back Four Years, Voters Have Short Memories. "It’s a smart question for Mitt Romney’s campaign to be asking, and one that President Obama needs to develop a better answer to. Still, it’s probably best not to take the question literally. If voters did, Mr. Reagan might never have been elected."

"But Mr. Obama’s fate could hinge on the last three months of jobs numbers — including the report on Friday, which will come the morning after his speech to the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. Talk about accidents of timing: Mr. Obama’s words in Charlotte are suddenly going to seem a lot more inspired if the next morning we find out that 200,000 jobs had been added in September. If the employment report is a dud instead, his speech will seem much emptier, both to pundits and to voters. But it will be the recent news that they are thinking about — not what happened four years ago. The question that voters have been more inclined to ask in past elections is this one: what have you done for me lately?"

Paul Krugman is less happy with the question, The Fire Last Time. "Obama came to office in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The question should be how well he dealt with that crisis — and in particular whether the man seeking to replace him would have done better." He shows two graphs: real GDP per capita and the ratio of employment to population:



I really don't understand why the Obama team is blowing the answer. The answer is yes we're doing better and we could be doing better still. We need to invest in the economy and not fall into the austerity trap that Europe has.