KEY POINTS:
Just how high has John McCain bounced? Can Barack Obama drag him back down? What impact is Sarah Palin having? These are uncertain days in the presidential election.
What do the polls show?
John McCain, the Republican nominee, held a RealClearPolitics.com poll average lead of 2.2 over Barack Obama yesterday, after bouncing as high as 54 per cent in one poll after his party's convention.
That compares with the Democrat's post-convention peak last week of 50 per cent in two polls. Is this simply a bounce that will settle? It's hard to know. By the middle of last week Obama was at 49.2 per cent on the RCP average - while the Republican convention was under way and five days after his nomination speech.
The same pattern could be occurring this week. McCain hit 48.3 per cent a couple of days ago for an average advantage of 2.9 and was yesterday slightly down to 47.4 and a 2.2 average. At that exact time last week Obama had started to slide and was at 48.8 per cent.
It's possible that by the weekend or early next week, the polls could be back to stalemate.
Who had the better convention?
Team McCain emerged with the stronger wind at its back. Partly this is because the Republicans held their convention second and both conventions were over a compressed time-frame.
The Republicans cut short the attention that had been on the Democrats and their messages are currently clearer in voters' minds. They were also more consistently "on-message" than the Democrats. The bio of McCain reminded voters of who he is.
But also McCain turbo-charged his supporters with his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate and added a much-needed star to the Republican firmament.
The task for the Republican ticket now is to maintain momentum in a year when McCain has only rarely been a frontrunner. Sparking the party faithful is important. Turnout will be crucial in November.
What is McCain doing?
He is trying to kick on and turn his bounce into a consistent lead by holding a series of joint rallies with Palin in battleground states. This is smart politics: he is harnessing Palin's freshness and popularity to give his overall campaign a big lift.
Previously he was trawling the electorate with small, low-key town-hall meetings - the sudden switch to excited rallies makes the ticket look like a winner. Yesterday they drew 23,000 people to one event - McCain's biggest crowd so far.
He continues to push his convention line that only a pair of Republican "mavericks" can clean up the town the party has ruled for most of the past decade.
McCain is trying to focus attention as much as possible on the characters on the ticket and the issue of government waste - and away from economic problems and He Who Must Not Be Named (George W. Bush).
What do the poll data say?
Essentially, McCain has got his party "base" jumping, he has crowded onto Obama's "change, reform" patch and improved his favourability ratings.
A CBS poll reports that 65 per cent believe Obama can bring about real change, whereas only 46 per cent think McCain can - but that's still up from 28 per cent before Palin arrived.
An ABC/Washington Post poll gave Obama a 12-point lead on change but noted that the gap was as high as 32 points in June. CNN found only an 8-point gap in Obama's favour, compared with an 18-point lead in its previous poll.
CNN says that the candidates' favourability ratings are now virtually identical: McCain 60 per cent for and 33 per cent against, Obama 60-34 per cent, whereas before Obama had an edge in likeability.
CBS found that 42 per cent of McCain's backers were now keen to vote, up from 24 per cent before the convention. There's still a happy-clappy gap - 53 per cent of Obama's supporters describe themselves as enthusiastic.
CNN found another bright spot for Obama: the number of Hillary Clinton supporters contemplating voting for McCain has dropped from 27 per cent to 19 per cent.
The ABC poll gave McCain a 50 to 43 per cent lead among independents - a change from a 45 to 43 per cent lead to Obama in August. There are more registered Democrats than Republicans. Both candidates are scrapping for the independents in the middle.
Rasmussen released polls in several battleground states this week.
In Pennsylvania, Obama leads 47 per cent (up 5) to 45 per cent; in Colorado he leads 49 (up 1) to 46 per cent (-3); in Florida he is up 2 to tie McCain on 48 per cent; in Virginia McCain is up 1 to lead 49-47 per cent; and in Ohio McCain leads 51 per cent (up 3) to 44 per cent (up 1).
In Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania, independent voters favour Obama by 10-17 per cent margins. In Ohio and Virginia they back McCain by 11-26 per cent.
Whereas in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia, about 10 per cent of Democrats and Republicans back the other party's candidate, in Florida and Ohio 18 per cent of Democrats are backing McCain.
What is Obama doing?
In contrast to McCain he is working small gatherings. He has been sharper in his rhetoric this week and any complacency seems to be gone. He has been largely focused on the economy, which is the Democrats' major area of advantage.
Yesterday he made a point of tying spending promises to withdrawal from Iraq and freeing up billions of dollars.
The conventional wisdom is that the "lipstick on a pig" row was a mistake which could backfire, that Obama should have stuck to the economy and avoided mention of anything that could be turned to McCain's advantage.
But, in a way, it was an effective, lo-fi transmission that the Republican ticket does not represent real "change". He cannot afford to allow McCain to squat on his "reform" turf.
By creating a controversy Obama ensured his argument got blanket coverage, and he drew attention to Republican tactics in the process.
As Alex Spillius pointed out in the Daily Telegraph, Obama also needs to find a shorthand way of getting his economic offerings across to voters.
The fact that his running mate, Joe Biden, can hold meetings on his own and that the party can call on leaders such as the Clintons to campaign means Obama can reach more people - while he waits and hopes that Palin's star will fade.
What effect is Palin having?
On the surface it is a similar buzz to the excitement which has followed Obama from the start: long queues and pumped crowds rocking bigger venues.
Whereas Obama's oratory channels an invisible, spiritual, collective discontent rooted in the issues - "we know we're on the wrong track, we need to change it" - the interest in Palin is more simply about herself, her values and her Angelina-in-Ugg-boots likeability. That's still a powerful draw.
The Republicans present Palin as a reformer.
And the tundra spunk at the podium does a good job of fleshing out the image. The lurking elephant in the room is that already it is patently obvious that the image doesn't add up to reality.
Alaska asks for more money per capita than any other state, according to an analysis in the Anchorage Daily News.
Palin employed lobbyists to bring home the pork while Mayor of Wasilla, was for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she turned against it and while she may have put her jet on eBay, she didn't actually sell it there.
Palin has been repeating statements on the stump all week that have already been discredited, while reading reheated lines from her convention speech from a teleprompter. So far the Republicans have also managed to cocoon her from journalists' questions.
It could be that voters will become so sold on Palin that none of this matters enough in the short time left before polling day.
Or it could be that voters will concentrate on the top of the tickets and be more turned off by than tuned in to media critiques of Palin.
What does polling say about Palin?
The CNN poll this week showed female voters standing by their man, Obama, 52 per cent to 45 per cent for McCain.
A Survey USA poll in one of the battleground states, Virginia , found no indication the Palin pick had changed how women view the contest. In that poll, McCain had 43 per cent of the female vote, down one from a month ago.
However the ABC poll noticed a spike in support for McCain among white women. The poll found that a 50 per cent to 42 per cent lead for Obama among this group before the conventions had morphed into a 53 per cent to 41 per cent lead for McCain.
In polls of four battleground states, CNN found that Obama trails McCain among white women by double digits in Missouri, Virginia and Michigan but not in New Hampshire.
The ABC poll says that Palin's selection made 49 per cent of respondents more confident in McCain and 39 per cent less so. In comparison, Biden was less polarising: he made 54 per cent feel more confident in Obama and 29 per cent less so.
The CBS poll found that Biden was considered prepared enough to be president by 70 per cent of people and not by just 13 per cent.
For Palin, people were almost evenly divided, 47-42 per cent. But 60 per cent considered Palin someone they could relate to (compared with 40 per cent for Biden) and her favourability rating of 44 per cent was twice what it was immediately after she was chosen.
Who has the advantage?
Looking beyond the current polling, the overall theatre of war is still challenging for the Republicans.
The election will be decided by the Electoral College tally, not the popular vote. Each state has a certain number of EC votes. To be president, a candidate has to reach 270.
Once each party's usual suspects are discarded, attention focuses on those states which could swing either way. People in these battleground states see far more of the candidates than anyone else and it's no accident that campaign tales of economic woe tend to involve "Joe from Dayton, Ohio" , and "Betty of Scranton, Pennsylvania".
When each party's safe states are added to states considered to be leaning towards that party, the current polling suggests this:
CNN gives Obama 243, McCain 189 and says 106 votes are a toss-up.
RCP has Obama 217, McCain 174 and 147 a toss-up. Just on straight polling, RCP gives Obama a winning 273 and McCain 265.
Rasmussen has Obama on 264 - just six from victory - McCain with 247 and 27 toss -ups. Its toss-up states are Colorado , Nevada and Virginia.
It is still only September and the candidates will have to navigate three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate over the next few weeks. Anything could happen.
