ARG: Kerry 46, Bush 45, Nader 3

Note: This poll was taken over the first three night of the RNC. While the horse race numbers have tightened slightly (by 2-3 points), and Kerry has lost ground among Independents since immediately after his own convention, Bush clearly has his work cut out for him tonight if he is to get much of a bounce. Also, I doubt ARG was calling voters until 11 or 11:30 last night, after they would have seen Zig-Zag Zell blow his top.

My bet, Bush manages a two to three point gain from his speech tonight, but more poor economic numbers on Friday and Zell's blow-up haunt him going into next week - when the real post-convention polling is done. Kerry has a chance now to turn the GOP convention into a liability by pointing to the fact that the Republicans barely mentioned the word jobs in four days of speeches. Their most pointed reference to the economy was Arnie's "Economic girlie men" slur.