FiveThirtyEight weights polls based on judgments of pollster quality; The Upshot’s model does not.

How should you interpret polls around conventions?

Candidates often receive a bounce around their party convention. But the idea behind a bounce is that what bounces comes down — they are temporary.

Adjusting for a convention bounce means you are subtracting points from a candidate’s polling average. It is a penalty. The size of the penalty at its peak ranges from about three to four points in the FiveThirtyEight “polls plus” model to nothing at all in P.E.C. estimates or in the FiveThirtyEight model pictured in the chart above, which has no convention adjustment.

It’s too early to know what the right adjustment is this year. Our model is about two points at its peak.

Whether the recent changes in polling represent a true long-term shift in the state of the race will be clearer in a few weeks.

How valuable are state polls?

Our model cares more about state polling than national polling. If there is a discrepancy between the national average and what we’d expect the national popular vote to be based on the state averages, the model adjusts the state polls slightly.