Romney convention speech gets lowest positive rating since Gallup started tracking in 1996

I'm sure the Romneyland spin machine will try to take solace in their narrow two percent advantage on the "more likely/less likely to vote for Romney" question, but these new numbers from Gallup are an utter disaster. Gallup has asked that question after almost every convention since 1984, and those are the worst numbers it has ever found. The 2004 GOP convention come close, with a 3 point net impact respectively, but George W. Bush was an incumbent polarizing president.

The root of the GOP's problem is Mitt Romney. His convention speech was the lowest-rated convention speech by any presidential nominee since Gallup started tracking 1996:

Romney's acceptance speech this year scored low by comparison to previous convention speeches going back to 1996. Thirty-eight percent of Americans rated the speech as excellent or good, while 16% rated it as poor or terrible. The 38% who rated the speech as excellent or good is the lowest rating of any of the eight speeches Gallup has tested since Bob Dole's GOP acceptance speech in 1996.

To get a sense of just how bad a 38 percent positive rating is, the second-lowest mark recorded by Gallup came from John McCain in 2008 ... and it was nearly ten points higher. McCain's speech got positive marks from 47 percent of voters that year.

With such a poorly-received convention and nomination speech, it's no wonder that Romney is seeing basically no bounce from his convention. Gallup's own survey now puts Obama ahead of Romney'even though Romney was leading before the convention. So while Romney was looking for a bounce, it appears all he got was a thud.