Gallup isn't seeing it, nor is Democratic-leaning PPP taking the pulse of swing states. Rasmussen showed a 6 point Romney bounce in the first 3 day tracking poll that was measured after the convention was over.

Will Obama do any better? Their TV ratings will probably be better given the star power of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama speaking on Thursday night. But if the American voter buys into what Obama is going to say, and what the Democrats are going to say about the GOP, and gives the president a boost -- you can bet it will be proclaimed that the race is over and Obama has won.

Michael Barone wonders if conventions aren't passe:

The Democratic National Convention opening Tuesday in Charlotte will be the 86th national convention of our two major parties. Republicans have an unbroken chain of conventions going back to 1856; the Democrats' unbroken chain goes back to 1832, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving (and only Catholic) signer of the Declaration of Independence was still alive. In my August 26 Examiner column, the conventions, which used to be a communications medium and decision-making forum, have become opportunities for the two parties to make the case for their nominees, and I argued that "an antique form still serves a useful function."

I speculated in a blogpost that this would be the last four-day national convention (the Democrats having already cancelled their Monday Labor Day session). Others are speculating that we may not see national conventions again at all. In an interview with the Washington Post's Right Turn blogger Jennifer Rubin, former New Hampshire Governor and Romney campaign spokesman John Sununu, said "This may be the last convention, in my opinion." Rubin goes on: "Conventions, [Sununu] says, are from a bygone era when communication and travel were difficult. Now much of the business of conventions can be transacted by phone or email. Sununu speculates that the GOP Convention will cost $100 million. 'I can do a lot of good with $100 million,' he says."

 Similarly, House Speaker John Boehner, the chairman of this convention, was quoted in Roll Call as saying, "These are very expensive propositions to put on. I think that given as much news as people get today and the way they get their news, I'm not sure that having a four-day convention for the future makes a lot of sense."

I think it will depend on what happens with campaign finance laws between now and 2016. If there are going to be more limits placed on spending, conventions might still be worth putting on -- at least some kind of truncated event of one or two nights. There will always be a need to have the challenger give a speech without the media screen that tries to interpret what the candidate says through a prism of ideology or partisanship.

So they might not even call it a "convention." But there will be some event in the late summer in 2016 that showcases the party's national candidates and gets people talking about politics.