Clinton's convention bounce

How big is Hillary Clinton's convention bounce?

A fresh set of post-Democratic convention polls shows a sudden shift toward the Democratic nominee.

By Steven Shepard

Hillary Clinton just out-bounced Donald Trump.

An initial set of post-convention polls out this week shows a sudden swing toward the newly minted Democratic presidential nominee and suggests Clinton begins the three-month sprint to the general election with a consistent — but not insurmountable — advantage.

Five new public surveys, each conducted over the weekend following Democrats’ national party convention, give Clinton a lead ranging from 3 to 9 points. Four of the five pollsters point to a clear Clinton bump, having found Trump ahead or down by only a single point the week before.

What’s also clear is that bump exceeds the rise in support for Trump after his convention the week prior. While Trump called his bounce “the biggest bump in the history of conventions,” the best poll for him showed his support ticking up 6 points, while other polls showed no change or a nominal Trump boost.

Clinton’s bounce appears to be larger. She rose 7 points in her best poll, and 3 or 4 points in the other three polls for which there’s a direct comparison after Trump’s convention but before Clinton officially earned her party’s nomination in Philadelphia.

And that post-Philly bump has given Clinton an unquestionable lead in the general election as the campaign shifts to what could be a long stretch of relative stability. With the two conventions now in the rear-view mirror, the next defining moment of the campaign might not come for the next eight weeks: the first of three scheduled presidential debates on national television.

The bounciest of the new polls, a CNN/ORC International survey conducted Friday-Sunday, shows Clinton leading Trump by 9 points, 52 percent to 43 percent. That’s a massive shift from just a week prior, when CNN/ORC gave Trump a 3-point lead, 48 percent to 45 percent. Clinton’s 7-point bounce over that time was larger than Trump’s 6-point surge from a poll conducted shortly before the GOP convention in Cleveland.

A new CBS News poll conducted over the same time frame, shows Clinton ahead by 6 points, 47 percent to 41 percent. That’s a 4-point jump for Clinton, who trailed Trump by a point in between the two conventions, 44 percent to 43 percent. (This uses CBS News results including voters leaning toward one candidate, which CBS began to measure with the between-conventions survey.)

Trump’s post-convention bounce in CBS News’ polls, on the other hand, was just 2 points.

The third poll showing Clinton swelling against Trump was from the online pollster Morning Consult. A 4-point Trump lead after his convention became a 3-point Clinton edge in a new survey released Sunday — with a 3-point rise in support for Clinton over that time. (That compares to a slightly larger, 5-point bump for Trump.)

Another online survey, a weekly NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday morning, gives Clinton an 8-point lead, 50 percent to 42 percent. Since the survey was conducted over a 7-day period from last Monday-Sunday, it includes interviews conducted both during and after the Democratic convention — but a bounce is still apparent for Clinton. She’s ticked up 4 points from last week, when she led Trump by just 1 point.

Trump, on the other hand, got no bounce in last week’s NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll.

Public Policy Polling, the Democratic “robopollster,” found Clinton with a 5-point lead in a post-convention national poll, 46 percent to 41 percent. But PPP hadn’t conducted a national poll since late June, when Clinton was ahead by 4 points. That suggests — after a July that included a scathing statement from FBI Director James Comey about her “careless” email practices and a raucous GOP convention — Clinton has emerged from her own convention still ahead.

There is one poll that continues to show Trump in the lead: a web survey from the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California. That poll is conducted differently than most others, surveying the same respondents day after day over the course of the campaign, rather than selecting a new, random sample for each poll.

But there are other measures that point to Clinton having a more successful convention, at least as reflected in the polls. While Gallup isn’t conducting public horse-race polling this cycle, the legendary pollster found voters were more likely to say they had a more favorable impression of the Democratic Party following its convention than the GOP after its gathering. Moreover, more respondents narrowly said the Democratic convention made them more likely to vote for Clinton than less likely — while a 51-percent majority of adults surveyed said the GOP convention actually made them less likely to vote for Trump. And while Trump’s acceptance speech in Cleveland beat Clinton’s in television ratings, respondents to the Gallup poll gave higher marks to Clinton’s speech.

Clinton’s favorability rating is on the rise following her convention, though it remains historically poor for a major party nominee. In the CBS News poll, Clinton’s favorable rating now stands at 36 percent, up from 31 percent before the convention. The percentage of voters who have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton shrank from 56 percent last week to 50 percent now.

Gallup is seeing a definite increase in Clinton’s favorable rating in its rolling, one-week samples measuring both candidates’ favorability. The most recent update includes Americans surveyed last Monday through Sunday, during and after the Democratic convention. Clinton’s favorable rating is now at 42 percent — up from 37 percent a week ago. Trump’s, on the other hand, has slid back to 34 percent, after peaking at 37 percent last week.

While the CNN/ORC poll shows the most dramatic swing on the ballot test, it is stable with regard to Clinton’s image rating. The poll shows Clinton’s favorable rating ticking up to 43 percent, from 41 percent the week prior. And the percentage of voters who have an unfavorable opinion dropped just a single point, from 55 percent last week to 54 percent this week.

The data — reflected in the five polls released over the past 48 hours — are somewhat limited thus far. And with the exception of a PPP poll in Pennsylvania, there hasn’t been any battleground-state polling since the Democratic convention to confirm Clinton’s bounce-back extended to the states that really matter.

The polls typically become more predictive of the final result following both conventions. And there are only a few defined moments left on the calendar on which the election could be decided, including the three scheduled Clinton-Trump debates. The first one, on Long Island, is in just under eight weeks — an extended period of campaigning for both candidates without the automatic national attention that comes with a convention or a debate.

In the interim, both candidates are plugging away on the campaign trail. But Clinton — and her allied super PAC, Priorities USA Action — is the only one actively advertising on television in the battleground states, giving her the opportunity to lock in the advantage with which she is leaving the conventions, according to the polls.