I thought I’d check in with Sam Wang today to see what he thought about Romney’s convention bounce, and the news for Republicans isn’t good. Not only does he think they got no bounce, he thinks they probably got a negative bounce. In terms of electoral votes, he figures they lost a bit, then gained a bit, and ended up about 10 EV short of where they started:
Fow what it’s worth, I’d attribute this partly to a weak convention — Hurricane Isaac, mediocre speeches, Paul Ryan getting a little too carried away with his deceptive claims, Clint Eastwood stealing the limelight from Romney — but mostly to the fact that we simply have a very divided electorate these days, and conventions aren’t likely to change too many minds. Add to that the fact that ad campaigns on both sides started running at gale force levels back in May, and the two candidates were pretty well defined long before Romney took the stage in Tampa. My guess is that Democrats will do a little better simply because they have better speakers and are running a tighter convention, but I doubt they’re going to see much of a bounce either. We’ll know by next week.
