The new frontrunners

If John McCain was hoping to get a "game changer" by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, it seems to have worked, for now.

The GOP nominee got a big boost from the Republican Convention in St. Paul last week, racking up a huge lead in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll.

The poll, the first to be conducted entirely after the end of the two party conventions and the selection of their running mates, found McCain leading Obama by 50 percent to 46 percent among registered voters. Even more impressive, the McCain-Palin ticket had a 10 point lead, 54 percent to 44 percent, over the Obama-Biden ticket among "likely voters."

The strong showing in the Gallup poll helped McCain get his first overall lead in the average of all major national polls since the two nominees were decided in June. For the first time since April 14, McCain now leads Obama, although only by 1 point, in the average of all the national polls collected at Real Clear Politics.

Among the findings of the poll, Republican enthusiasm has grown for McCain from 47 percent to 60 percent, cutting the so-called "enthusiasm gap" with Obama down to 7 points. The selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seems to have helped McCain, with 29 percent of voters now saying they are more likely to vote for McCain because of her, while only 21 percent say they are less likely to vote for him.

Palin gives McCain a 8 percent net positive while Sen. Joe Biden gives Obama a 7 percent net positive, as 14 percent say they are more likely to support him with Biden and only 7 percent say they are less likely.

There were at least three silver linings in the clouds for Obama. First, President Bush's approval rating remains low at 33 percent and 63 percent of voters say they are concerned that McCain "would pursue policies too similar to those of the current president," according to USA Today.

Second, viewers were far more impressed by Obama's convention speech than by McCain's. Thirty-five percent described Obama's outdoor speech at Denver's Invesco Field as "excellent" while only 15 percent said that about McCain's speech last Thursday in Minnesota. 

Third, post-convention polls don't accurately predict the winner of the fall election, according to political scientist Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia, who has studied conventions since 1960. "You could flip a coin and be about as predictive," Sabato told USA Today. "It is really surprising how quickly convention memories fade," he said.