Obama's Lead Tenable?

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I forgot to mention on my last post that Silver also pointed out in Saturday's article that it was not whether President Obama would get a boost from the Democratic National Convention, but how long his boost will persist. Though, the NYTimes blogger pointed out that Presidential candidates get boosts from their conventions; he also pointed that poll volatility (how sensitive the poll numbers are or how they shift towards one candidate) for this election is low, meaning that perhaps convention boosts may linger beyond two or three weeks. What is interesting about the volatility table that Silver put together is that elections that had high volatilities were elections that resulted in ousting an incumbent, thus, making the incumbent an one term president (James Carter and George H.W. Bush). If high volatility implies that an incumbent will get ousted, then this year's volatility implies the incumbent President will win reelection. 

On the other hand, Silver argues that in order for Governor Romney to win the General Election Romney will need to rely on just more than turning out his base in large numbers. In fact, the blogger points out that the Challenger's strategy of turning out his base isn't enough because of results from the past two General Election turnouts. The former Governor will need to gain ground among minorities to get a more defined victory come November. Moreover, among three hypothetical turnouts for November, The Times Columnist uses his third table as the one that will likely be result for the General Election because the President won't be getting as much support from white voters as in 2008. Still, under two of the three scenarios that Silver points out the President seems like he'll win reelection.