Obama's Post Trip Bounce

Asked yesterday about the political effect of his trip abroad, Barack Obama told the New York Times, "I wouldn't even be surprised if in some polls we saw a little bit of a dip because we've been out of the country for a week." Campaign manager David Plouffe told the Politico he didn't expect a bump either: "We wouldn't expect any sort of -- I guess the term people use is 'bounce' ... "It was an important week, but it was just one week in this campaign."

Commentators agreed, noting that Obama's numbers didn't go up during his trip.

But it seems Obama was wrong. Political Wire sees a post-trip bounce in two polls: Rasmussen and Gallup:

Before the trip:

* Rasmussen: Obama 46%, McCain 46%
* Gallup: Obama 45%, McCain 43%

After the trip:

* Rasmussen: Obama 49%, McCain 43%
* Gallup: Obama 48%, McCain 41%

In its analysis, Gallup says:

Obama's particularly large leads over McCain in Friday and Saturday's tracking suggest that the massive publicity surrounding Obama's speech at the Victory Tower in Berlin on Friday -- the only major public event of the trip -- and coverage of Obama's meetings with the heads of state in France and Germany may have tilted U.S. voter preferences more in his favor.