Clinton (1992) - 30 points
Reagan (1980) - 13 points
Carter (1976) - 16 points
While this is not cause to get over-confident, it does essentially make the race Bush's to lose in my humble opinion. I do not think there is much enthusiasm for Kerry out there. People who support him tend to be anti-Bush rather than pro-Kerry. Kerry has had his chance to win converts and he hasn't come through. On the other hand, Bush still has a chance to bring a lot of people back over into his camp. I think he will, especially when people are made to realize that John Kerry has the most liberal voting record (when he does vote) of any senator in the country. Even more liberal than Hillary or Ted Kennedy!
So Kerry may have inherited the anti-Bush vote but that is not the stuff of winning campaigns. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were also hated by the Left and they both rolled to re-election in 1972 and 1984.
I appreciate those stats but am wondering if you know what these successful challengers' polling numbers were before their respective bounces. If Reagan was at , say, 38% before his big bounce, that would suggest that fewer people were commited to Reagan before the convention; whereas more people now eem committed to Kerry before the convention, meaning that there were fewer undecideds to begin with and thus fewer points vailable for a bounce,
Again, I don't know Reagan or clinton's pre-convention polling numbers. But the abov scenario seems plausible to me. Do you happen to have this data?
Remember, Clinton did get the 30 point bounce, but a LOT of that was due to Perot's BS. Perot had somethign like 20% and when he dropped out he made Clinton out to be the better guy from what I recall. If Perot had stayed in, the bounce would have been quite a bit less for Clinton.
That's all well and good - but you also have to look at their starting point from before the convention. Gore got a 19 point bounce, but he was trailing by 10 going in...