After a brief breach of the 50% marker according to Gallup, both Rasmussen Reports and the Gallup Daily Tracking now show McCain/Palin in a close race with Obama/Biden, following Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech at the RNC Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Is this a “bounce” out of the RNC Convention? Probably not.

On Tuesday of this week, the Gallup daily tracking poll has found that since the conclusion of the Democratic convention, Obama has risen 5 percentage points in the polls and lead John McCain 50 percent to 42 percent. However, having only briefly breached that 50% marker, Obama’s numbers have been steadily falling throughout the RNC Convention, and today stand at 48% (compared to John McCain’s numbers which have remained roughly flat throughout the entire RNC Convention at 43%).

While following her speech on Wednesday, Gov. Palin’s “favorable” ratings improved dramatically to 58% - one more point than either Obama or McCain - according to Rasmussen Reports. The Alaskan Newspaper, Anchorage Press, conducted a poll showing Palin’s approval rating at 82%, an envious zeneith for most Washington Bureaucrats. Despite being immensely popular, the Palin “bump” seems to be confined only to how people feel about Gov. Palin and not the McCain/Palin ticket.

Overall, the average tracking polls of the recent polling suggest that McCain trails Obama by as little as 2% and by as much as 4%. Given the error percentages of the polling - to me that suggests that for all intensive purposes, McCain is in a “dead heat” with Obama with perhaps Obama having a slight advantage in overall polling over McCain.

I would add, however, that polls that include Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, and the McCain/Palin ticket against Obama/Biden show Obama/Biden leading McCain by 5% - with Barr drawing more from Republican voters than Nader drawing from Democrats. In the end, I remain unconvinced that Barr or Nader will amount to much in the general election. National polling about non-standard electoral candidates has historically been kind of a “crapshoot” in terms of predictive value. As you will recall, in 1992, Ross Perot (Independent who was really a Republican), lead the race  with 39% percent of the vote after Clinton secured the nomination. In the final election results, Perot received less than half of that - about 18%. Perot was an exceptionally strong third party candidate. Barr and Nader are both unlikely to breach more than 2% of the vote, and in all liklihood will draw from the two party candidates evenly. This might provide Obama a slight tactical advantagae in some states as he already has the overall polling edge nationally. I do not think Barr will, however, affect McCain the way Perot affected Bush in 1992.

In short - it’s very much a close race after the end of the RNC Convention.

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• Why I think it’s sometimes appropriate the Democratic mascot is a jackass…
• Gov. Palin “knocks it out of the park” with her convention speech…
• Hurricane Gustav affects GOP Convention Schedule