RUSH: I want to draw your attention to something Pat Caddell has been talking about. Pat Caddell, of course, was the pollster for Jimmy Carter working back in 1980 and we all remember what happened in 1980. In 1980, it was much like today but with one big difference that I will get to in mere moments. Pat Caddell, and actually a couple of other people, have said that this election feels a lot like 1980. What do they mean? What they mean is all the polling data leading up to the election had Jimmy Carter winning and winning handily.
And to this day, by the way, I should tell you that the Republican Party thinks of conservatism that way. The Republican Party, when they hear “conservative” they think “Goldwater, landslide defeat.” They don’t think Ronald Reagan, two-term landslide win. They don’t. They think Goldwater, landslide loss. But back in 1980 they didn’t like Reagan. The Democrats made fun of him as not being serious, not being too bright. “Dangerous! Can’t have this guy’s finger on the nuclear button.” There are a lot of similarities in the way Trump is being treated and the way Reagan was being treated.
The difference is that Reagan did come from the political system. He was elected twice governor of California. He was Screen Actors Guild president. So he had political pedigree. Trump has zilch, zero, nada.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, back to Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen and the similarities in 1980 and today. There are many. Reagan was seen much as Trump is seen by both Republicans and Democrats. The polling data going into election in 1980, the last poll, which was like a week out, had Carter winning by nine. Now Caddell tells people that he knew going into the weekend that poll was wrong. They were, I guess, doing internal polling and he knew before the election even came that it was over. Nobody is saying that now as they were privately. Nobody said it publicly in 1980, by the way. In 1980, election night, everybody thinking Carter was going to win.
An hour into election night coverage on NBC they proclaimed Reagan a landslide winner. Basically ten minutes after 8:00 p.m., before California had even closed. So Caddell and Doug Schoen were on Fox on Friday, and they were saying, to both it feels exactly like 1980. You’ve got the similarities in the way Reagan and Trump are being regarded, the way they’re being treated. You’ve got similarities in the polling data. But the one thing they said that makes this vastly different from 1980 is early voting. There wasn’t any early voting in 1980. Election Day voting was it. There was no way. You had absentees, but they weren’t counted.
There was no early voting. So you had no indication at all, other than exit polling, how 1980 was going to go. They say that early voting throws all of that comparison to 1980 out the window. Essentially they say that the existence of early voting and the volume of early voting eliminates the possibility of a late surge for anybody. The late surge is the early voting, they say. And the difference is early voting is known. It’s a known quantity. It’s known by virtue of party loyalty. We don’t know how early voters are voting, but we know how many of them are Republican and Democrat.
So they concluded, Caddell, which was a change of heart, concluded, yeah, okay, when you factor that in, Hillary’s probably going to win, after having believed that we were on a trajectory that made this a potential 1980 again. Which meant a surprise massive number of people coming out for Trump that weren’t counted. They say early voting eliminates that possibility. They’re the experts. I’m not so sure. The assumption there is that if there is this giant groundswell, if there is this late-breaking surge, that it’s already shown up. And you can see who it is in the early voting.
Well, that’s not exactly what the Drive-Bys have been worried about. The Drive-Bys and the Democrats have been worried about a late surge of unregistered voters all these years, people who have never voted or very rarely voted because they’re so fed up they don’t think the system is affected by elections. They don’t think their vote matters. They think that the people that run the show are going to do what they do no matter what the people want. So they’ve tuned out. And there are, of the adult population, about roughly 50 percent that do not vote every election. And it’s been a fear on the Democrat side that Trump is connecting with those people and that waves and waves of them could show up on Election Day. So Caddell and Schoen say, no, no, no, no. They’ve already shown up.
Maybe. For that to be true, this wave, this surge of voters, unregistered, that’s poised to vote for Trump would have to have been so inspired they already would have shown up and registered and early voted, so that there is no late surge to happen. The late surge is what defeated Carter. There was a late surge that showed up that just rendered the nine-point Carter lead meaningless. They say early voting means that can’t happen. We will see.
Despite all of that, folks, they tell us that Hillary’s got this awesome ground game that Trump can’t compete with. Well, that awesome ground game, early voting, Democrat turnout, is down, as I just mentioned in Florida. Early voting overall turnout is down. Rally attendance. Hillary’s got a great ground game? Where is that ground game getting crowds for her rallies? There aren’t any. Attendance is abysmal. She’s in Pittsburgh. It doesn’t compare to Trump in Sarasota. Sound bites coming up.
Hillary’s social media, it literally pales in comparison to Trump’s. You talk to people in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, you can’t find a Hillary sign in a yard anywhere, but Trump signs are everywhere. And primary turnout on the Democrat side was way down. Does any of that cancel out what Caddell and Schoen were saying? We don’t know. We just have to wait and find out.