What Drives Convention Bounces?

Tom Holbrook has some interesting historical analysis on the "bounces" presidential nominees receive in their poll numbers coming out of the party convention.

"Two things in particular seem to drive the size of the bumps. First, candidates who are running ahead of where they "should" be (based on the expected election outcome) tend to get smaller bumps, and those running behind their expected level of support get larger bumps... The other key factor is the timing of the convention. The earliest convention tends to get a bigger bump, and there is some evidence that going appreciably earlier exacerbates this effect."

This would suggest Sen. Barack Obama is likely to get a bigger bounce coming out of the Democratic convention than Sen. John McCain will get from the Republican convention.

Big caveat: "It should be clear that the magnitude of the convention bump is not a great predictor of election outcomes."


August 13, 2008




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