Simple formula: the more Romney goes hard Culture War, the more his campaign chiefs are getting freaked by the polls.

Never underestimate how much of a campaign’s tempo can be affected by arbitrary facts of the lives of the reporters who cover it. In this case, campaign reporters are coming off two weeks of convention reporting and travel. So there’s been a weird calm of sorts over the campaign. What has turned people’s attention, though, is increasing — though still incomplete — signs that President Obama got a significant bounce out of his convention after Gov. Romney got little if any.

But in addition to that there’s been a jagged and ragged quality to the Romney campaign over the last couple days.

A few of you have asked how it could be that President Obama appears to be surging into a small lead and yet the PollTracker Average just moved Mitt Romney slightly ahead. Very good question. So let me explain a bit about our methodology. (More in our FAQ here.)

Let me start with the usual caveat that tracking polls are not only notoriously unstable; they are that way largely by design. What’s more, convention bounces are often ephemeral. But we’re beginning to see real signs of a significant bump for President Obama coming off last week’s convention.

Before looking at the numbers, I would make one point. Whatever we learn about an Obama bump, I think the bigger issue isn’t whether Obama got one but that Romney seems not to have gotten one. And he’s the one who needed it.

Fear of Obama taking G-d off coins emerges as new reason Romney is hiding his money in Switzerland and the Caymans.

With the internet “map wars” heating up, Google is trying to up its game with new, super-hi-res maps.

As I noted last week, TPM will soon be replacing Facebook comments with new commenting system which will allow users to login via various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.) or choose a native TPM log-in.

We’re tentatively planning to have the new system up and running next week. Please let us know via the comments email if you have questions.

PollTracker editor Kyle Leighton looks at the cutback in ad spending in swing states and what it means for the electoral map:

Full size version.

Voter suppression efforts and bogus claims of vote fraud have been a key issue for this site going back to 2002. And this year, with a raft of new laws pushed through after the 2010 midterm election, the issue is more critical than ever. So for the final lap of the campaign season we’re bundling all our reporting of the issue — from the news blogs to LiveWire — in one special Voting Rights landing page. Check it out and bookmark it right here.

I think you can be sure Mitt Romney’s press handlers got a bad feeling in the pits of their stomach when Romney gave this answer.

Bret Bair asks if he regrets not mentioning the troops in his convention speech …

“When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important and I described in my speech, my commitment to a strong military unlike the president’s decision to cut our military.” (emphasis added)

Watch.