Gallup is now out with the results of its daily tracking poll. It shows McCain with a 5-point lead, 49-44. Tracking polls average three consecutive days, which means this one is the first to feature only the days following the convention.

This means the McCain bounce moved the polls 13 points in his favor. That is second only to Bill Clinton’s 16-point jump in 1992.  Obama’s bounce was 6 points. And according to Gallup, McCain only took the lead in the tracking poll on Friday, the day after the convention. Obama moved up a single point in the tracking poll in the days following his speech. So what does this tell us?

Two very important things, I think. One is that the McCain speech was, despite the attacks heaped on it, an unqualified success in exactly the way the McCain campaign would have wanted it — it shifted undecided voters in his direction at the right moment, after his own party found itself unified by the electrifying pick and performance of Sarah Palin.

The other is that the Obama speech, despite the praise lavished upon it, was a failure.

McCain delivered a non-partisan speech, extraordinarily positive in tone and ruefully self-reflective about the Republican party’s mistakes. Obama delivered a highly partisan attack on McCain and Republicans full of praise for the Democratic party’s rich history of glories and wonders — a complete reversal of the theme that made him a phenomenon and a startling alteration in tone for him.

Obama did not need to do it. He chose to do it. And he left the field open for McCain to go positive, upbeat, and with a far more broad message. With these results in mind, there is reason to believe the Obama convention speech may go down as one of the most glaring unforced errors in recent political history.