Like everyone during these peak vacation days, you’ve surely been trying to follow all the ups and downs of the presidential horserace polls. You know, the ones that nobody believes but everyone talks about.

They showed Donald Trump’s hefty bump coming out of the Cleveland convention last month and then Hillary Clinton’s even heftier jump after the Democrat assembly in Philadelphia. She was ahead. They were tied. Then, she lead again.

All very exciting, right? But guess what? Now that we went through all that, the roller-coaster, the gaffes and distractions, the two most-disliked presidential candidates in modern history are right back where they started.

Almost exactly. Disliked and living it.

Gallup is just out with a new poll showing Clinton’s favorable rating now is 39%, same as it was in mid-July when the GOP convention began. Trump’s is lower, as usual, now 32% favorable, one point higher than 27 days ago.

It seems Americans think they know this odd couple about as well as they want. And barring some startling event, the poll presages a campaign of little movement on either side. Still, they’re going to spend hundreds of millions spinning their image wheels in futility. Buy TV station stock now.

The two were tied briefly at 37% favorable after both national conventions. Clinton then climbed to 42% approval during her bump.

But both sank back down to the same sad levels of disapproval. Forget the angry generals, the sad Gold Star families, the performing pols and earnest workers yearning for freedoms or more federal regs. All for naught.

This new Gallup telephone poll of 3,566 adults dashes any hopes by either campaign that their four-day, live-streamed speech-a-thons would vault them into a more favorable position for the 88-day slog (yes, still 88 long days!) before the official election results on Nov. 8.

Early voting, however, starts in some places at the beginning of October. So, maybe any evil Vladimir Putin plot will be a September surprise this year.

The Gallup survey also found that in this political quagmire of a summer, both Clinton and Trump rose only three points in favorable ratings among their partisans as a result of the convention shows.

Among Democrats and independents leaning Democrat, Clinton had a 70% favorable rating before the conventions. Now, she’s holding at 73%.

That keeps her still slightly ahead of Trump at 68% favorable, also up three points since mid-July, among Republicans and like-minded independents.

This would seem to indicate lingering bruises for Clinton after the long primary struggle with the old Vermont guy, temporary Democrat Bernie Sanders, and his vociferous band of younger supporters seeking free stuff.

Much as enthusiasm for Trump is not exactly full-throated among conservatives and establishment Republicans. Those Trump sentiments are complicated further by the impact of the billionaire’s, shall we say, sometimes counterproductive campaign style, as Allahpundit has discussed here and here.

For comparison purposes, recall that in 2008 despite Obama’s interminable acceptance speech in front of those faux Greek columns that sprouted in Denver, 91% of Democrats felt favorably about their guy.

That same year Republicans felt favorably about former POW, then-nominee John McCain to the remarkable tune of 94%. Not including, of course, Donald Trump. That was before his capture by the idea of a GOP ticket into the Oval Office.