Conventional wisdom suggests that a presidential candidate will receive a small boost following his party's national convention. These convention "bounces" have varied in size, from the tiny two-point jump for George W. Bush in Gallup's data from 2004 to the massive sixteen percentage point bounce for Bill Clinton in 1992. There are a few exceptions to the phenomenon: John Kerry's numbers declined after the 2004 Democratic convention. Convention bounces tend to be short-lived. . . .

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