Kerry's bounce was as big as Clinton's, and here's why

1. The August 2d Newsweek says that in 1992, by one count, roughly 66 percent of all voters were up for grabs. According to the same story, 17 percent are up for grabs now (my friend Rob, who knows such things, says other polls show only 10 percent up for grabs). If you take the 17 percent figure, that's almost 4 times as many voters up for grabs in '92 as compared to today.

2. Clinton got a 16 point bump from his convention in 1992 - that was considered a "massive" bump according to the AP. The average bump, according to Gallup, is 5 to 7 points.

3. Kerry gets a bump of 4 points from last week's convention, according to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll. That's a tad below average, according to Gallup.

4. But more importantly, Kerry's bounce was as strong, if not stronger, than Clinton's, and here's why.

This election, as Newsweek notes, is NOT AT ALL AN AVERAGE ELECTION. There are MUCH FEWER voters up for grabs - most have already committed to one candidate or another. AP reports 75% of Kerry and Bush supporters say they will "definitely" vote for their candidate - that's a big jump from 1992, when fewer than half of Clinton's supporters said the same about their candidate going in to the convention.

Clinton in 1992 was able to use the convention to woo 16 of the 66 "up for grab" voters - or around 1 in 4 of the "up for grab" voters.

Last week, Kerry was able to woo 4 of the 17 "up for grab voters" - or 1 in 4 "up for grab voters." (And if you believe that only 10 percent of voters were "up for grabs," then Kerry won over 4 out of 10 voters as his convention bounce.) Using either figure - 1/4 or 4/10 - that's pretty darn good, and just as good if not better than Clinton did with his one-in-four "massive" bump.

Were 66 percent of all voters up for grabs this time around (as they were with Clinton in '92), and Kerry got one-in-four (just as he did at the last week's convention), that would have given Kerry a "massive" 16-point bounce. And had Kerry gotten four-in-ten of 1992's 66 undecideds, that would have been an over 26 point bounce!

Now I'm not arguing that Kerry got exactly the equivalent of a 16 or a 26 point bounce, BUT, the fact remains that Kerry inherited a very divided, set-in-its-ways electorate. If only ten percent of the electorate were in fact "up for grabs," and Kerry had gotten all 10 percent as a result of his convention bounce, the media would still be saying "gosh, Clinton got 16 percent, and Kerry only got 10%, so Kerry didn't do as well" - even though, in fact, KERRY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN ALL THE AVAILABLE VOTERS.

The bottom line is that Kerry's convention won an equal or larger percentage of the available undecideds as compared to Clinton's phenomenal 1992 success. It is patently unfair for the media, or anyone else, to suggest that Kerry got a small bump when he and Bush are fighting for a smaller pie, and when, in fact, Kerry got as large a proportion of the remaining voter-pie as any candidate in recent history.