RUSH: I don’t know, it was somebody. Somebody said the polls were gonna tighten as we get closer to the election. Somebody said it. You heard me say it? You heard me say it? Yeah. I guess that’s right.
Hey, folks, here’s the bottom line. There isn’t anybody that knows what’s gonna happen here. The best thing that you can do is to carry that attitude forward. Nobody knows. They really don’t know.
And what’s changed? A couple of polls. A couple of polls. It is amazing. Look, I’m being critical, can’t avoid it. It’s just amazing how something that is not news becomes the leading news item every day, and that is polling results. Nobody knows! And yet whatever the polls say every day determine the entire shape of coverage and commentary and reaction by everybody. It’s not just the Drive-Bys. I mean, we’re all prisoners to it.
So I’m telling you, the best way to go forward for these next few days, nobody knows. There’s not a soul that knows. One thing you do know, the one thing you can be confident in knowing is that on the Democrat side it wasn’t supposed to be going like this. Whatever it is, the WikiLeaks dumps were not supposed to be happening. All the attention to Hillary’s emails were supposed to have been taken care of and vamanosed long, long ago. Donald Trump should have been, was supposed to have been vanquished months ago.
This was supposed to be a coronation. It was gonna be a cakewalk. And if you’re the Democrats how can you blame ’em for thinking that? They have literally been in bed with the media. The media has been attending strategy dinners with the Clinton campaign and John Podesta. The Clinton campaign has most of the money sewn up. The Clinton campaign is spending most of the money. You can’t blame them for thinking they had this wired. And here we are and nobody knows. There isn’t a soul who knows. And nobody can know because it’s the future. And nobody can predict for you with ontological certitude what anybody is going to do on Election Day. And nobody can tell you what shocking news development may happen between now and then.
You think the Democrats are through with their October Surprises? I don’t. You think Trump might have a couple of his sleeve? Who knows. But there’s still a lot of time to go here, my friends.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Quick review of the polls and then we’ll get back from the break we’ll sound bites to back all this up. Fox News: “Clinton’s Lead Cut in Half.” She was up six; now she’s up three in the Fox News poll. The Drive-Bys take this seriously. They hate Fox News, but they believe in the Fox poll. The interesting thing about the Fox poll is that even the Fox poll oversampled Democrats by seven percentage points. Democrats sampled are 44%, Republicans 37%. The Democrat advantage is around 2.5 to three. I’m not complaining. Don’t misunderstand.
There are very, very, very, very, very, very few people who know this. I happen to be one who does. That’s why everybody was so shocked. Everybody went to bed thinking that Dewey had won. A big headline greets everybody the next day. But in fact Truman had. The reason they were surprised is nobody polled in the last two weeks.
The Drive-Bys might want to think about that because the news apparently is not good for them. Some new survey showed that Clinton’s national polling edge is narrowing, and in some of the battleground states, Florida and Ohio as well. “Hillary Lead Cut in Half in Washington Post/ABC Tracking Poll.” However, the AP is here to pick up the slack.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. A couple little additional bits of information. In the Fox poll last week that had Hillary up six, they oversampled the Democrats by 9%. This week, with Hillary’s lead cut from six points to three points, the Democrat oversample in the Fox News poll is 7%. So you reduce the number of Democrats in the sample and Hillary’s support comes down. It makes sense. The ABC/Washington Post tracking poll oversampled Democrats by 7%. Democrats 36% of the group, Republicans 29%.
The rest of these people are independents and unaffiliated and all that, and we’re being told that there are more of them than there are Republicans and Democrats. But the thing to do is, when you look at all these, you add the Democrats to the unaffiliated and the independents. For example, in the ABC/Washington Post tracking poll, you’ve got 36% Democrats and 29% Republican. Some of the independents are for Hillary you gotta figure and some of the unaffiliated, so basically you have a sample, and out of a hundred percent of it, 29% are people who say they’re Republican.
By the way, this 12-point lead stuff and 11-point lead, do you remember what Obama beat McCain by in ’08? It was seven point something, eight points, something like that, in 2012 Obama beat Romney by 3.8 points. What is this 11- and 12-point lead stuff? You notice it’s dwindling now. All these polls, somebody said this was gonna happen as we get closer to Election Day. But, but, wait a minute, we’ve got the AP here. We have the Associated Press, and the Associated Press does not reflect anything that you just heard.
Hillary Clinton appears on the cusp of a commanding victory, says the AP today. “Hillary Clinton appears on the cusp of a potentially commanding victory over Donald Trump, fueled by solid Democratic turnout in early voting, massive operational advantages and increasing enthusiasm among her supporters.” Overall, the AP poll shows Clinton leading Trump by 14 points among likely voters, 51-37. So the Fox poll cuts it in half, six to three. The ABC poll, 12 points down to six. Trump is leading in Florida. Bloomberg up by two. AP out here is the outlier at 14 points. Where are they getting all of this enthusiasm for Hillary? I read that and I said, “What have I missed?”
“Fueled by solid Democrat turnout in early voting.” Well, you know, I’ve looked at the numbers in Republican early voting, and there’s two things about that. The numbers are staggering. The number of people who have already voted, early voting, Republicans hold a nominal lead, at least this was as of yesterday. But then you add this: Early voting hasn’t yet begun in three or four really big Trump counties in Florida. It hasn’t even started yet.
This is truth. I mean, our eyes don’t lie. There hasn’t been any enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton in this whole campaign. She hasn’t been able to draw a crowd anywhere. Her book doesn’t sell. Tim Kaine draws crowds of 30. There hasn’t been any enthusiasm. Now all of a sudden the AP’s got a poll out with a 14-point lead and massive operational advantages, increasing enthusiasm among her supporters. Among likely voters, the poll oversampled Democrats by nine points. They oversampled Democrats in general by 11 points. This poll oversampled registered voters by 10.
They went out here — this always happens. The AP’s always able to find a Republican fed up with his nominee. They’re always able to do it at this stage of the campaign. “James Stepp says he is an Ohio Republican who is supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. His reason? A Trump presidency, he says, would damage the GOP for years to come. ‘The party needs to jettison Donald Trump in order to survive,’ said Stepp, 29, of Franklin, in Warren County.
“Voting for a Democrat in order to save the Republican Party is not a common thread of presidential campaigns, by any means. But this is no ordinary election, and many Republicans are finding reasons to back away from a nominee whose provocative rhetoric and treatment of women appall them.”
It’s just too camp. It never ceases to amaze me how the AP always finds Republicans to say exactly what the AP thinks. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that funny? The AP always is able to go out there in the deepest red part of America and find a Republican that thinks exactly like the AP does, and especially the Millennial, the 29-year-old, why, it couldn’t get any more perfect.
And, you know what? What is the word of one guy? It’s anecdotal, is it not? There is no science here. The AP went out and they found one guy, a 29-year-old Republican, James Stepp, who says he’s gotta vote for Hillary to save the Republican Party. Who thinks that way outside of magazine editors and so forth? Seriously, we gotta vote Hillary to save the Republican Party? Hee-hee-hee.
You’re supposed to ignore that. That’s anecdotal. There’s no science behind that. We don’t know how many of those 15,000 are gonna vote. We don’t know how many of those 15,000 are gonna vote for Trump if they vote. We don’t know anything. You can’t factor the size of Trump rallies into any projection. You just can’t do it. We in the media are not gonna do it, we’re not gonna let you get away with it.
Yet they can go out and they can find one guy in Warren County, Ohio, 29 years old claiming he’s voting Hillary to save the Republican Party. And that is enough of a news story to shape an entire story that is based on the premise that Trump is going to lose big because Hillary’s brilliantly out there working Republican-dominated suburbs to find angry Republicans.
So Ohio is important again? That’s another thing. Remember, Ohio was vitally important when Hillary was ahead. When Hillary fell behind, the New York Times and the AP — remember those stories? — told us Ohio was no longer a bellwether. Ohio doesn’t matter anymore, they say. You know why? Because there aren’t enough black people that live there. Too many white people in Ohio. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not relevant. It’s not a bellwether. It doesn’t tell us anything.
This is just three weeks ago, folks. Three weeks ago these same schlubs at the AP who are reporting on one guy, a 29-year-old Republican in Warren County, Ohio, say he’s voting for Hillary to save the GOP. That’s gospel. Three weeks ago, Ohio was irrelevant. But now one guy, anecdotal, is enough to write a story combined with their new poll showing Hillary up 14 to bury the Trump campaign. And that’s how they do it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Time to go to the audio sound bites now, this to back up the polling data I just shared with you. As I mentioned, the ABC poll is magically down to six points from 12, and here we have on Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos talking with Matthew Dowd, a former Republican… Well, he worked for George W. Bush. Now he’s gone over to the dark side. He’s a Drive-By analyst, ostensibly.
DOWD: Instead of describing this as “tightening,” I would describe it as “settling.” The race is settling in. As we remember having conversation just a few days ago when we had the race at 12, I said I thought the race was roughly at six.
RUSH: Ah.
DOWD: This race has been at five or six. One hundred and fifty days ago, when the general election started it was at five or six. A hundred days ago, it was at five or six. Two weeks ago, it was at five or six. A week ago, it was at five or six. So I think the race is just settling back to its natural equilibrium.
RUSH: Oh.
DOWD: If he somehow moves the race below four to three or two, then this race is very competitive.
RUSH: Oh, so they have nothing to worry about yet? It’s always been five or six, other than that one couple of times it was 12. But this guy says it’s nothing happening out there. It’s always been five or six. No, it hasn’t. You people have never portrayed this as that close. You haven’t done that. Shortly after the Democrat convention, that was the last time. Since then it’s been landslide territory. But this guy says, “I’ve always been telling everybody five or six! I’ve always been saying that. It’s no different now.” But look what he’s allowing.
“Now, if this gets to below four, to three or two, then the race is competitive.” Yesterday Trump was gone. Yesterday Trump was fini. Yesterday Trump was humiliatingly out of the race ’cause he’d taken time-out to go to the hotel opening, plus the women, plus all the other stuff, plus the fact that they just hate Trump. He was history. He was toast. It was over. But now today — because of one thing, their poll, one thing — why would anybody rely on these people? We’re not getting any expert analysis of anything. We’re getting people reading numbers and telling you what they think about the numbers. But it can get close now. Oh, no!
And here is Cokie Roberts…
RUSH: What? W-w-wait a minute! We now learn today for the first time that the female support for Hillary’s been soft, not hard? Ahem. It’s been soft? “Uh, Republicans are starting to come home,” meaning yesterday the Republicans hated Trump and they couldn’t stand it? Today they’re coming home? And women have been saying they’re for Hillary but they’ve “never really been all that happy about it”? Cokie, how’d you know that? Why are we just learning this today? Why didn’t you tell us two months ago, a month ago, six weeks ago that the female support for Hillary wasn’t all that tight, it wasn’t all that hard?
Why today is it soft? Is it because The Oprah went out there and said, “Hey, you don’t have to like her to vote for her”? Did you see that endorsement from The Oprah? The Oprah endorsed Hillary by basically saying, “Hey, you don’t have to invite her to your house, you don’t have to like her, but you should vote for her.” And that’s what Cokie Roberts sounds like a little bit here. Well, you know, women have never really, really been all that tight. Her support’s not been that hard. It’s softening.
Well, we’re not through. David “Rodham” Gergen, CNN, Erin Burnett OutFront last night.
GERGEN: He could definitely win this. It is possible for him to win. It remains an uphill fight because of the Electoral College, but he could get there.
RUSH: What?
GERGEN: I think he has been helped by the fact that he hasn’t been quite so much mired in defensiveness about the craziness that he went through with Miss Universe —
RUSH: Are you kidding me?
GERGEN: — and the sex tape and the women coming forward. He’s finally got a little bit of a clearing. And, by the way, these polls, I think, do not yet show the impact of the Obamacare spike in premium prices —
RUSH: Ohhhhh!
GERGEN: — which could add a little more weight to the Trump side.
RUSH: Oh.
GERGEN: But she’s still got the lead. She’s still the favorite.
RUSH: Yeah?
GERGEN: But he’s knocking on the door again.
KING: If the election’s about creating jobs or about changing Washington, Trump wins. Voters view him as the best candidate to do that by a big margin. If it’s about temperament, a role model for our children, Hillary Clinton wins by a huge margin. So how the candidates shape the race in this final week plus is critical. If it’s about jobs and change, Trump might win. If it’s about temperament, who’s a role model for our children, that is Hillary Clinton’s basket.
RUSH: Wait a second! Wait a second. You mean if it’s about jobs and the economy and the state of the country, Trump could win? When did that change? ‘Cause that’s always been what Trump’s about. Why wasn’t it two weeks ago, Trump could win? This is what I mean, folks. Everything that you’ve heard up ’til now, you may as well just forget it because these people are switching on a dime here and it’s the polls that are doing it. I’ll guarantee you if tomorrow the polls show Hillary back up 10 to 12, these people are gonna say, “It’s over! Trump never had a prayer.” Nobody knows, folks. Trust your own instincts. Nobody knows.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The polls and them growing tighter. It’s just astounding, ladies and gentlemen, what we’re hearing on cable news networks last night versus just the day before, certainly a week before. It’s all because the polls are tight, and now all of a sudden Trump can win, Trump can win.
And again, I just want to emphasize to all of you, nobody knows, folks. Nobody knows. And the people who are set up as experts, these analysts and commentators on TV, they don’t know. I mean, why do you need somebody to tell you what you already know? Why do you need somebody two days ago telling you Donald Trump doesn’t have a chance, it’s over, every negative they list, and it’s all because of polling data, and maybe their personal desire.
And then two days go by and a new poll, series of polls come out and Hillary’s lead is cut in half and all of a sudden Trump can win. You don’t need experts on TV to explain this to you. They aren’t expert. They don’t know anything you don’t know. In fact, they’re in a more dangerous position. They think they know more than they know and they think they are experts here. Cokie Roberts. “Well, you know, some Republicans are coming home. They’re starting to come home.” What?
The AP has a story today, this Republican guy out of Warren, Ohio, is gonna vote for Hillary to save the Republican Party. What do you mean, Republicans are coming home? But she said they’re coming home. And she also said, because the polls are tightening, the female support for Hillary, it’s not been all that tight, it’s not been all that solid, it’s always been there, but it hasn’t been that solid. Really? Why didn’t we learn this last week?
I mean, up to now we’ve been told that women hate Donald Trump, have we not? That women hate Trump, that Trump is just considered “ew” by all women of any substance, he doesn’t have a prayer. Now all of a sudden women are starting to waffle on Hillary? And we go to the endorsement by The Oprah where she said (paraphrasing), “Yeah, you don’t have to like her, and you don’t have to have her into your house, but you should vote for her.” So it’s fluid and it remains fluid and it is not over. Nobody knows.
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