Per Gallup, Obama approval ratings surge during convention (and his lead grows)

After holding a steady 47-46 lead for eight long days in the Gallup daily presidential tracker, today's numbers shockingly moved when Pres. Barack Obama extended his lead to 48-45.

This poll features a seven-day rolling average, so 1/7th of the sample hadn't seen Mitt Romney's convention acceptance speech. Tuesday night calls were made before the DNC's prime-time coverage began. Thursday night calls were made before Obama spoke. So 2/7th of the sample is post-Michelle Obama, and another 1/7th is post-Bill Clinton.

I hope that all made sense, but bottom line, it won't be until next Saturday that we have a full post-conventions sample. So these numbers are extremely preliminary.

HOWEVER ...

Gallup is also tracking Barack Obama's job approval numbers, and these numbers are based on a three-day sample.

Here's the last two weeks:

I've shaded red the days of the GOP convention (Aug. 28-30), and blue the days of our convention. The first thing we see is that the GOP was completely incapable of damaging Obama further than he was already damaged. The last sample without any GOP convention days was 43-48, and the first entirely post-convention sample was ... 45-48.

That's not supposed to happen. Clearly, viewers shrugged off all that "we built this" nonsense and whatever else they talked about. I'm not sure what that might've been, because all I can remember is Clint Eastwood yelling at an empty chair for some reason.

But then, look at what happens when those Blue days start hitting. The 9/2-4 sample only includes the daytime convention, since calls were finished before anyone saw Michelle Obama. Didn't matter, Obama was up three. The 9/3-5 sample includes Michelle Obama, Obama up another four points. And the 9/4-6 sample, which includes Bill Clinton? Obama surges another net five points.

These numbers don't include calls taken after Obama's speech last night, but already Obama is up a net 12 points since the start of his convention.

Unfortunately, Gallup doesn't track similar numbers for Romney, so we can't compared the two side by side. But there is real movement in Obama's numbers.

Remember, the job approval sample is three days, the horserace one is seven days. Now we wait to see if that surge in job approvals translates to further movement in the head-to-head.