BOUNCE UPDATE: Guess the Time poll mentioned below wasn’t a fluke, because the Newsweek poll shows a similar bounce:

President George W. Bush leads his Democrat opponent John Kerry by 11 percentage points according to a poll immediately after the Republican National Convention in New York, Newsweek magazine reported.

Bush is supported by 54 percent of the 1,008 registered voters surveyed Thursday and Friday, compared with 43 percent support for Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator. Independent candidate Ralph Nader polled 3 percent. . . .

The president’s job-approval rating rose to 52 percent, the first time it’s been above 50 percent since January, Newsweek said. A 53 percent majority wants to see him re-elected, the highest since May of last year, the magazine reported.

Seems pretty consistent. Polls only mean so much, of course, and we still have nearly two months left until the election, but this can’t be bringing joy to the Kerry camp. I’m wondering, though, if there isn’t a connection between these poll results and this observation: “It has now been one month and three days since John Kerry last answered questions from a real reporter.”

UPDATE: According to this table, Bush’s lead increased dramatically between Thursday and Friday, presumably as a result of his speech Thursday night (and perhaps Kerry’s response at midnight Thursday):

9/3 only 54 38 4 4
9/2 only 49 43 3 5

As you can see, Bush picked up 5 points between 9/2 and 9/3. Assuming that this holds up when we see other polls, it represents a rather dramatic effect for a single speech.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I guess we can call this an informal Democratic focus group:

Near the end of the night’s broadcast, I took a poll. How many people thought Kerry was going to win?

The room contained liberal and Democratic voters of different races, national origins, incomes, professions and generations. Not a single solitary one raised a hand.

My stomach did a little flip-flop. I’d underestimated the depth of John F. Kerry’s problem, his lack, to quote a phrase from the Bush I years, of the “vision thing.” No one can win the presidency without mobilizing the base, and Kerry’s base, uninspired and dispirited, is weakening.

Ouch. (Via PoliPundit).

And Ryan Sager reports a similar experience:

I watched President Bush’s acceptance speech tonight at a sushi bar on the Lower East Side with a group of reporters from a prominent Washington, D.C.-based publication. The whole time: heckling. Every. Single. Line.

Now, we’ve all seen the polls (or read about them) where the press corps routinely leans Democratic by a factor of about ten-to-one. Still, it was a bit shocking.

It was a little like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but with reporters instead of robots.

Every line of the speech, every item on Bush’s laundry list of domestic candy (yuck, too sweet), they had something snide to say. More money for community colleges? Somehow not good enough. Education? Bush sucks — and any school showing improvement under No Child Left Behind is just fudging its numbers. Iraq? Don’t get them started.

But here’s the clincher:

The punch line here, however, is this: Everyone at the table expected Bush to win. No anger. No denial. Just acceptance.

And that’s before the polls came out.

(Longer story on the poll here.)

And CrushKerry says that the Newsweek poll is overweighted toward the GOP. Hmm. Okay. But it’s still pretty consistent with the Time poll.

MORE: Mickey Kaus: “Obviously there are plenty of swing voters because Bush just swung ’em!”