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Bouncing to Victory?

- September 17, 2012

With a full week of polling data from after the two conventions, we are starting to get a better sense of the size of the convention bounces.  But what do those bounces tell us about likely winner come November?  Using a variety of sources,we can estimate a few facts about convention bounces and eventual election outcomes:

* Looking at the 12 Presidential elections beginning with 1964, we see that the ultimate winner has gotten the larger post-convention bounce in six elections and the smaller post-convention bounce in six elections.  Not much predictive power there.  (The party out of power has gotten the larger bounce in seven elections and the smaller bounce in five.)

* It is rare but not unheard of for candidates to out-perform their post-convention peak.  Among the 22 major-party Presidential candidates running since 1968, there appear to be three cases where candidates out-performed their post-convention polling numbers: Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, and George H. W. Bush in 1988.  All three were incumbent-party candidates, although Bob Dole appears to have performed about as well as his post-convention peak in 1996, too.