The quandry of optimal timing of the announcement of the vice-presidential choices

When should Barack Obama and John McCain announce their vice-presidential choices? The objective would be to get maximum coverage and electoral bounce from the announcement. And here is the description of the timing quandry for each candidate.

Barack Obama is expected to return from his current Afghanistan, Iraq, and European foreign policy tour on or about July 28th. The Beijing Olympic games begin on August 8th and end on August 24th. The Democratic party convention begins on August 25th and ends on August 28th. (The Republican party convention begins on September 1st).

So Obama has to announce his vice-presidential choice at the convention (he would not obviously announce during the olympic games) or between about July 8th and about August 3rd or 4th so that the Obama campaign can enjoy 3-4 days of comprehensive news coverage -- the vice-presidential choice is likely to generate substantial free publicity. The announcement at the convention is a bit too risky. Further, Obama's birthday is on August 4th, he would be 46 years of age, and that would be a wonderful occasion to showcase the youth of Obama (and conversely, the age of McCain -- 72 years.) So an announcement is likely to be made between about July 28th and August 3rd or 4th.

What about John McCain? He will certainly wait to know Obama's choice before he makes the final decision. That means that McCain has two options given the fact that McCain also will not make the announcement during the olympic games -- August 8th to August 24th and it is a protocol to lie low during the other party's convention (in this case, the Democratic party convention which is between August 25th and August 28th).

Therefore, one alternative for McCain is that he can make the announcement immediately after the Democratic party convention i.e. on August 29th or 30th or 31st and before the Republican party convention begins on September 1st. That would limit the post-convention electoral bounce for Obama after this monstrously publicized acceptance speech on August 28th. But the problem of announcement on August 29th or 30th is that the announcement is that the announcement may also be contaminated with substantial discussion of McCain's age (72 years old) and comparison with Obama's youth and age (47 years). Actually, the interaction between the positive glow from the Democratic party nomination acceptance speech for Obama and the unfavorable coverage of McCain's age could turn out to be an even biggest boost for Obama.

The other alternative is that McCain can follow Obama immediately on or about August 3rd or 4th: let us say, Obama announces his vice-presidential choice on August 3rd, McCain can make his announcement immediately on August 4th or 5th and that would neutralize any electoral bounce that Obama may get from his vice-presidential choice. But then Obama's birthday on August 4th poses the same problem of discussion and comparison of the ages of the candidates.

So, while it is fairly obvious that the optimal time frame for the announcement of his vice-presidential choice is July 28th - August 3rd or 4th for Obama but it is not clear what is the optimal time frame for McCain (immediately after Obama in early August or immediately after the Democratic party convention in late August).

Differences in preference measurement

There is an anomaly in the public preference measurement and polls regarding the choices in the U.S. Presidential elections between Senators McCain and Obama. Here is the empirical anomaly --

The daily tracking polls/preference measures (i.e. continuous time-series data) appear to show a smaller (1-3 points) lead for Senator Obama. See Gall Up and Rasmussen Report numbers. But the more static preference measures appear to suggest a larger lead (6-9 points, see recent Quinnipiac, CBS/New York Times, ABC/Washington Post, Reuters/Zogby polls) for Senator Obama.

Why is this? Not clear. Some obvious explanations are not plausible. Polls are not taken in the same time periods. No that can be a reason because time-periods overlap. Polls are taken by different organizations. That can not explain it -- for example, the preference measurement by the USAToday/Gall Up (Gall Up organization conducted the poll) found a larger lead for Obama than Gall Up's own tracking poll in June.

So we have to fall on the general explanations i.e. differences in sampling methods, sample sizes, and modeling specifications etc. Sure but these explanations are not quite satisfying because there appears to be convergence in the preference measures both in the time-series data (1-3 points) and the more static data measurement (6-9 points).