Convention bump

* UPDATE @ 4:35 PM EST * - The Mainstream Media Infects Obama Campaign with Virus

Catriona makes a great comment below: McCain is making strategic decisions while Obama can only make tactical shifts. As I point out in a reply to Catriona, one reason why the Obama campaign might be making so many tactical shifts is their over-reliance on getting favorable coverage from the MSM.

Michael Graham makes this point clear in a recently posted op-ed in the Boston Herald:

"I have one piece of advice for the struggling Obama campaign: Fire MSNBC. They’re killing your campaign ..."

"The national media are dominated by enthusiastic Obama supporters desperate to see Obama the Enlightened win the White House, heal our souls, reset our thermostats and shut down the Fox News Channel. And that’s precisely how their coverage of Palin comes across: desperate ..."

"The media has thrown every imaginable charge at Palin, from banning books to cheating her way to the much-coveted title of Miss Wasilla ..."

"The harder the media work to elect Obama, the lower his poll numbers go."

Urgent message to the MSM: please keep on doing what you're doing!

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After the convention, and a wedding I attended right afterwards, I have fully recovered, getting a good 12 hours of sleep last night.

Speaking of recoveries, I'm just as happy as Patrick that the Palin pick has energized the base and has given the McCain campaign a significant boost. But like Sean, I'm still cautious about national polls, and that state polls should be paid attention to. And I'm still doubtful about whether or not this revitalization at the top of the ticket will help downticket, but Reid Wilson and Kyle Trygstad at RealClearPolitics give some hope of a few pickups for us.

While McCain's post-convention bounce was stronger than Obama's, the question is whether or not some of this bounce will have staying power for the next 56 days. Soren notes the 20-point shift in McCain's favor with white women, as well as the independents starting to break for him. But it's not the polls or the major media events that have happened over this past summer that make me optimistic. What makes me confident is the fact that Obama has kept tinkering around with his message without making any significant structural changes his campaign; on the other hand, McCain has made significant structural changes to his campaign when they were necessary, during the primary and right before the convention. Put simply, Obama tries to keep his campaign afloat with "software updates" while McCain has shown the willingness to make "hardware upgrades" to sustain his campaign.

One of the questions that will be endlessly debated will be whether the convention provided John McCain with a bump up or a bounce (coming back down). You can imagine mechanisms for how a convention could do both. As Patrick pointed out, George W. Bush's 2004 convention bump gave an enduring lead in the polls.

For example, the Democratic convention likely provided some permanent consolidation of the Democratic base. Hillary Clinton supporting voters probably came home in some part to Barack Obama. These will likely result in a sustained increase in Obama's floor vote. The convention provided a moment for Hillary-supporting core Democratic base voters to return ot the party's fold.

Turning to the Republicans, we see a similar mechanism in play that might result in a permanent increase in McCain's floor. From the new ABC/WaPo poll, we note the cross-tabs of white women

White women have moved from 50-42 percent in Obama’s favor before the conventions to 53-41 percent for McCain now, a 20-point shift in the margin that’s one of the single biggest post-convention changes in voter preferences. The other, also to McCain’s advantage, is in the battleground Midwest, where he’s moved from a 19-point deficit to a 7-point edge.

White women supporting McCain could be attributed to any number of factors. The most obvious is Palin's star appeal, but also McCain's focus on service.

But another possibility is that white women are simply coming home to the Republican party. In CNN's 2004 exit poll, George W. Bush beat John Kerry 55-44 among white women.

In other words, white women voters who should be (or at least easily could be) Republican voters are now back to supporting the Republicans this cycle. Don't look for this dump to turn into a temporary bounce. This is a real phenomenon with a real mechanism, not some temporary blip caused by a whirlwind of media.