This is not what the President wanted to see today, but his "bounce" from the convention is statistically insignificant. As ABC's The Note wrote this morning:

There's the fact that two of America's leading news organizations (who poll together) are about to release some horserace numbers that are going to suggest a tight race and tease out the "Kerry closes the gap with momentum" storyline for which the press hungers. (As Joe Lockhart would say, EVERYONE in Washington knows about these poll numbers … )

Now we have confirmation from the "two of America's leading news organizations" that Bush's lead is indeed within the margin of error. Mark Murray over at NBC writes thusly:

The poll, conducted by Hart/McInturff, shows Bush receiving support from 48 percent of registered voters, Kerry getting 45 percent, and Nader getting 2 percent. Among likely voters (defined as those expressing high interest in the November election, who represent 78 percent of the survey), Bush holds a four-point lead over Kerry, 50 percent to 46 percent.

"The difference between those couple of points and being in a dead-even race is modest," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "This is not a difficult race [for Kerry] to get quickly back to being functionally tied."

In fact, the results among registered voters are virtually identical to the results from past NBC/Wall Street Journal polls — even though many experts claim that Bush had a resoundingly successful convention, and noted that Kerry (dogged by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who attacked his Vietnam record, and Democrats who questioned whether his campaign had a concrete message) had a dreadful August.

In the last poll, which was released just days before the Republican convention, Bush held a 47-45 percent lead over Kerry, a result unchanged from the survey in July. Moreover, June's poll had Bush leading 45 percent to 44 percent; May's had him up 46-42; and March's had him leading 46-43.

This cannot make Karl Rove too happy; in a poll in which the President has never trailed all year the President's lead today--perhaps at the peak of his post election bounce--is within the margin of error, thus statistically insignificant. In fact, it is similar to the margin by which he lead Al Gore in the days before the election four years ago, though Gore went on to win the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes.

Now, I'd like to hear that "Kerry closes the gap with momentum" meme that The Note talked about this morning...