Romney's convention bounce looks middling so far

The FiveThirtyEight “now-cast”, which does not adjust for the bounces associated with the party conventions, estimates that Mr. Obama would have a 72.3 percent chance of winning if the election were held today. That’s essentially unchanged from before the conventions, when the number had ranged between about 70 percent and 74 percent.

One way to interpret the trend in the “now-cast” is that, so far, Mr. Romney’s bounce is hard to distinguish from the statistical noise that we ordinarily see in polls. Based on the data that they published on Saturday, Mr. Romney’s standing in the Rasmussen poll was two points better than its 60-day average, but it was one point worse than average in the Gallup poll.

The FiveThirtyEight forecast, which penalizes a candidate in its evaluation of polls conducted just after his party convention, interprets the data as being slightly negative for Mr. Romney. On Saturday, Mr. Obama’s chances of winning the Electoral College rose to 73.1 percent in the forecast, its highest figure since Aug. 16, when it was 73.6 percent.