What Bounce?

Despite the ridiculous Time and Newsweek polls which overrepresented Republicans geometrically, the Bush convention bounce is...over. According to the latest ICR poll, Kerry is ahead by a point among RVs. (Bush holds a 1 point lead among RVs in the Gallup poll.)

Maybe more importantly, Kerry now holds a 5 point lead among RVs in battleground states. Ruy Teixeira has more:

The Gallup poll's internals also show that Kerry continues to lead among independents (49-46) and that both parties' partisans are equally polarized for their respective candidates (90-7). Note that these findings directly contradict the results of the recent Newsweek poll, which showed Bush doing much better among Republican partisans than Kerry was doing among Democratic partisans. Note also that, given the equal polarization of partisans and Kerry's lead among independents, the only possible reason Bush has any lead at all among Gallup's RVs must be because their sample has a GOP advantage on party ID (my guess is 5 points) that is inconsistent with almost all other polling data from this campaign season....

And in one day, the electoral vote scorecard flipped back to Kerry, 264-222 (though still short of the necessary 270). The only bad news in terms of electoral votes is a Zogby poll showing an 11 point Bush lead in Ohio. Kerry's now showing tiny leads in Florida, Missouri, and Nevada, which would be enough to push him over the top comfortably. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll has the national race tied at exactly 47.3% apiece, with Kerry ahead by 1.2% in battleground states. I'll give the last word to electoral-vote.com (no permalink):

From these data, it appears that the postconvention bounce is already played out. In short, all the hand-wringing and cheering based on the Time and Newsweek polls was a bit premature. If you are a Democrat, you can stop crying in your beer; if you are a Republican, carefully try to pour the champagne back into the bottle. It is still very close.