Tue Aug 3, 7:09 AM ET
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
There was a bounce after last week's Democratic National Convention.
But it went to President Bush (news - web sites), not John Kerry (news - web sites).
Pollsters and strategists are puzzling over Kerry's failure to get a boost from a convention that even critics acknowledged went almost precisely as planned. Polls show it improved voters' impressions of Kerry as a strong leader and a potential commander in chief. It burnished views of the Democratic Party.
Still, in the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, Kerry's support dipped 2 percentage points among likely voters compared with a poll taken the week before the convention. Bush's standing rose 5 percentage points. (Related story: Poll results )
Those changes aren't huge, and the survey has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points for the sample of 1,129 likely voters. But the direction they signal raises questions about a contest that continues to defy political assumptions.
Republicans were delighted. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd dubbed it an oxymoronic "negative bounce."
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