Holy Crap. We Could Actually Win This Thing.

With the bounce in full force, McCain's lead in the RealClearPolitics average stands at 2.9 points. This is a 9.3 point turnaround from Obama's 6.4 point lead last Tuesday, his high point post-convention bounce.

We can categorically say that McCain got the stronger bounce. The Tuesday before (which seems to be a good baseline as far as these things go, Obama was up 1.8 points, producing a one week swing of 4.6. Even if we assume Nate Silver's point that Obama's pre-Convention numbers be considered the baseline, McCain does no worse than Obama in the bounce department.

These numbers could be a false dawn. They could wane over time. But don't count out the possibility that there might be something durable about the dramatic increase in Republican intensity in the last week.

To see why, one need only take a look at the RealClearPolitics average from 2004:

Can you see where Bush's dramatic Convention bounce immediately dissipates? It doesn't, not for 4 weeks, until the disastruous first debate. 

During his Convention, Bush went from less than a point up to about 6-7 points up (McCain's bounce was actually stronger -- though his baseline numbers were probably soft post-Dem convention). Bush's bounce proved to be a lasting shift until another major event intervened.

So too was Gore's convention bounce in 2000. Though poll aggregation wasn't as big a thing in 2000, Gore appears to have moved from a stable 6-7 deficit in June-July to even or slightly ahead by Labor Day, largely through his convention and his transformative VP pick. This shift too proved to be lasting, as the race was close throughout September and October, with Bush not retaking the lead until the post-Olympic lull and Gore's Jekyll and Hyde debate routine.

The dramatic increase in Republican enthusiasm post-Palin suggests to me that something has changed categorically about the race, and it must be considered at least as significant as the consolidation of the Hillaryistas behind Obama.

For one thing, Republicans will not stay home. For frontline proof of this, watch for rising Republican fortunes in the Senate and House where McCain didn't artificially lift GOP numbers before. Soren made the point to me at the convention that you can't dock Republicans 2 points for lackluster GOTV anymore. The activists who love Palin will be rocking the phone banks the next 57 days, setting aside her impact on the general electorate.

The last week also suggests to me that there's something different about how Republicans engage in elections. I don't have an exact quote, but Michael Barone has argued that media bias works in the Democrats' favor early in elections -- but late in the game as organic interest grows and paid TV ads play a greater role, the pendulum swings back to the Republicans.

Harkening back to my theory about Normal Americans, I'd also say there are far more Democrats than Republicans who are hyperpolitical who get interested early. For Democrats, this is always the most historic, the most exciting, OMG look what he's raising online election. Another data point: historically, more Democrats have voted in primaries. And they have a willing ally in the media. This hype machine works so long as relatively few people are paying attention. But when the apolitical Republican base intensifies, usually in September (and as late as late October in the losing '92 and '96 races), they usually leave the media scratching their heads about where the previous 16 months of self-delusion went. In every election in the last 20 years save for 2000, the Democrat looked better in June than they did on Election Day. And it's looking like that will be the case again in 2008.