No Discernable Bounce

Evidently Kerry is not getting the expected bounce in the polls from the Democratic Convention last week. According to USA Today:

Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' impressions of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the head-to-head race against President Bush

[...]

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Bush led Kerry 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.

Yes this is within the margin of error, it is too early to tell, polls don't decide elections, caveat, caveat, yada-yada-yada.

But when you spend thousand of dollars to get your campaign off to a big start, and you don't get any perceptible change, that is still losing ground.

But Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush campaign, said "history doesn't bode well" for Kerry. Since World War II, the three challengers who have unseated presidents held clear leads after their conventions.

This election is still Bush's to lose. Here's hoping he doesn't.

UPDATE: Here is the actual polling data.