A Final Look at the Convention Bounce: It’s All Obama

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It’s now been nearly two weeks since the end of the conventions, and before long the polls will start to show the effects of the secret Romney video. So this seems like a pretty good time to check in on Sam Wang for a final look at what kind of convention bounce we saw. And luckily for me, Sam fixed a technical glitch in his polling feeds today, providing us with a corrected look at his estimated electoral vote count. Here it is:

Bottom line: The net effect of both the RNC and DNC appears to be a bounce from about 300 electoral votes for Obama to 322 electoral votes. That’s a pretty big bounce.

By the way: Some of you might be wondering why I usually use Sam Wang’s forecast rather than all the others that are out there. The reason is that back in 2008 I ran a pool to predict the results of the election, and Sam was one of the co-winners. For now, then, I consider him the official election forecaster for this blog. This is, needless to say, a tenuous position, and requires him to predict really well this year too if he wants to hold on to this prestigious post. But that’s life in the free market, no? Red in tooth and claw and all that. For now, though, he’s top dog.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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