Polls

Gallup poll: Obama holds 6-point lead after Democratic convention bounce

by Jonathan Easley - 09/11/12 6:41 PM ET

President Obama received a modest bounce out of the Democratic National Convention and now leads Mitt Romney by 6 percentage points, according to the latest Gallup poll released on Tuesday.

Obama leads Romney 50 to 44 percent, according to the survey, a 3-point bounce from his 47 to 46 percent lead before both parties conventions.

{mosads}Gallup notes that this is lower than the average convention bounce of 5 points, but a better showing than Romney received, who failed to see any sustained bump coming out of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., the last week of August.

Gallup’s poll had been almost completely static, with each candidate averaging 46 percent since May. But with less than two months until Election Day, Obama now holds the polling edge, after the two conventions.

Gallup is not the only poll to show Obama getting a small convention bounce. Conservative polling outlet Rasmussen showed Obama with a 5-percentage-point lead on Monday, although that shrank to 3 percent overnight. And a CNN-ORC poll released late Monday, the first major poll to come out after the completion of the convention, showed Obama with a 52 to 46 percent lead over Romney.

The Gallup survey also shows the president seeing gains in his approval rating, hitting the important 50 percent mark after languishing around 45 percent before the convention.

Perhaps the best news for the Obama campaign is that those polling numbers include last Friday’s weak jobs report, which showed employers added 96,000 jobs, well below forecasts. Economists had expected upwards of 150,000 new jobs in August.

The Romney campaign has sought to downplay the slew of polls highlighting an Obama bounce. On Monday, the campaign released a memo telling supporters not to read the polls too deeply, calling the Obama gains a post-convention “sugar high.”

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday also showed a tighter race for the presidency. Among likely voters, the candidates were running neck and neck with Obama at 49 percent to Romney’s 48, a 2-point boost for Obama and a 1-point bump for Romney since the same poll last month.