How did Kerry close the gap?

[old timey villain]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2004/president/us/general_election_bush_vs_kerry-939.html

John Kerry led Bush throughout the summer of 2004 up until the DNC convention. Then, after the GOP convention Bush gained a lot of momentum and started leading Kerry by 6-7 points. Then, Kerry closed the gap, but not enough to lead again.

Still, how did Kerry close the gap in the last month of the campaign?

[Stranger in a strange land]

Bush's performance in the first debate was awful, and the other two, while not as bad, were lackluster.

[sg0508]

The 1st debate got Kerry back into it. Bush held his own the last two debates and it was barely enough to maintain the lead at the end.

Had Bush won the 1st debate, he probably wins by an 8 pt national margin.

[old timey villain]

^^^

This section of the forum isn't really for people to get up on their soapbox. It's supposed to be a place to objectively or at least rationally examine previous election results. There's other threads around the forum where you can debate this kind of stuff.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

This section of the forum isn't really for people to get up on their soapbox. It's supposed to be a place to objectively or at least rationally examine previous election results. There's other threads around the forum where you can debate this kind of stuff.

I'm about to severely prune this thread.  I don't mind a little soapboxing here, which is why I held off doing anything with my moderator powers at first, but this wasn't debating but unsupported aspersions and counter-aspersions and so I reluctantly have handed out some points.

[Mr.Phips]

Bush's post-convention bump simply faded. 

[barfbag]

Polls usually tighten up towards the end of an election cycle. Al Gore closed the gap too.