Weekend Updates

Saturday: President Obama expands his lead in three tracking polls, with leads of 4 points in Reuters and Gallup.  To achieve this, he has gotten a bump of from 7 to 9 points since Wednesday at the DNC.  But the full convention won't be figured into these polls until the next one.

Meanwhile, according to the Princeton Election Consortium, Romney got a negative bounce out of the GOP convention.

Andrew Sullivan (who works weekends) thinks this might be major.

Gallup also calculated a major uptick in economic confidence of 17 points, but since it wasn't associated with any particular event, it remains something to watch rather than something to totally believe.

Sunday: Andrew Sullivan adds further evidence of an Obama surge based on the DNC.  He believes this is the first real change in the presidential race.  He notes that Nate Silver again repeats what others have observed: President Obama still has never really been behind.  What's left for the coming week is to see if the bounce continues and is reflected in other polls.  And then in a week or so, whether the lead remains.  It would be unusual if the race didn't tighten again, especially in October.  But the narrative so far could become that voters started having doubts about Romney over the summer, and the DNC made Obama seem like the better--and safer--choice.

There's something else reflected in the Reuters poll.  Obama leads in most categories: intelligence, eloquence, personality, etc.  But he has consistently led in many such categories, especially in personal appeal, but also overwhelming was the choice when voters were asked who they thought would win the election.  It may be that the convention has started giving people permission to leave reflexive GOPer choice and say they favor the guy they think is going to win.

The Obama campaign passed 700,000 donors over the DNC week. 

Finally, these two photos are being widely reprinted, both from Sunday.  Also an exchange President Obama had with a boy who said he was born in Hawaii.  "Born in Hawaii?  Do you have a birth certificate?"

This very big man who owns this pizza shop was so excited by having the President drop in that he lifted him off the ground.  The Secret Service told him it was okay to lift the President, as long as he didn't take him anywhere.

Joe Biden seems to have a way with the biker ladies, but not necessary the biker guys.