RUSH: I got a note here that I want to share with you from a friend. The entire note is typed in the subject line of the email. I’ve never seen this before: “Dear Mr. Limbaugh: A thought exercise. How many voters do you think Trump has lost in four years? I’d say hardly any. Really close to metaphysical zero. Now, how many votes has Trump picked up? It would seem to me a ton. Many hesitant conservatives who didn’t know what they were getting but now like what they have seen.

“We have lots of blacks and Hispanics with their respective record lowest unemployment and much more. Suburban women he lost with his boorishness, but now wins with the left burning cities down? In swing states in 2016 the polls were dead on on Hillary Clinton’s numbers. They were under by plus five on Trump. They’re further under this go round.”

This guy thinks, essentially, that if you go back and look at the last four years, how many votes has Trump lost? Hardly any. If you look at the Trump base, the Trump base is as solid as it’s ever been. Ninety-two percent of the Republican Party. And of that, the percentage who say that there is nothing that’s gonna stop them from voting for Trump is 62%. That number for Biden is 46%.

Biden, A, doesn’t have a base per se because he doesn’t have an agenda that people can glom onto. He doesn’t have a list of election items to get behind to vote for. So he’s a generic candidate. He’s the guy with the D next to his name on the ballot. That’s it. That’s all Biden offers. And so the number of the people that support Biden, the number that will do whatever it takes to vote for the guy is 46%? That’s low. That is really low, compared to the 62% on the Republican side who say there’s nothing to stop them from voting for Donald Trump.

So you have to assume that Trump has picked up — well, we know he’s picked up some African-American votes just with the Fiddy Cent thing, but we also know it stood to reason he was gonna pick some up because of the great African-American unemployment record that Trump achieved, the great economic advancements for a lot of different minority groups.

How many votes are the Democrats winning by burning cities? How many votes is the Democrat Party picking up by defunding the police? If you just look at this in a common-sense way, how many votes is the Democrat Party winning, picking up by way of their current behavior? And common sense tells you it can’t be very many. How many are they losing? Well, that is the question.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is the IBD (Investor’s Business Daily) and TIPP poll. As I say, it is tightening by the day now, folks, and it’s beginning to look like 2016. Let me run through it. Trafalgar is the group that got it right in 2016 in the battleground states, just to clarify, and I’m reading from their release. This is from their news story about this.

“Today’s Trump vs. Biden poll finds that the race between President Donald Trump and [Joe Bite Me] has suddenly gotten much tighter. IBD/TIPP’s latest 2020 presidential poll update shows that Republicans are rallying around Trump, Biden is leaking Democratic support, and the gap among independents has narrowed.”

Now, may I pause here for a moment? Yes, I may, because it is my broadcast. I want to go back to these poignant questions that I just asked. What has Trump…? How many votes has Trump lost in the past four years? Not very many. His base is as solid as ever. In fact, if you look at the breakdown… You know, they break down the attendance at every one of Trump’s rallies, and it’s phenomenal the people there. I ask, “Who are these people?” At every Trump rally, between 16 and 20% of the people attending are Democrats.

Still, even in 2020 now, four years removed, there are people showing up at Trump rallies who have not voted before. That means that there is even new interest — not holdover from 2016, but new interest — in 2020 from people who did not vote in 2016. Now, we think, because we’re into this so much, that people vote every year. They vote every presidential election. But, folks, the number of people that don’t, you’d be amazed. That’s why all these get-out-the-vote efforts exist, and it is why vote, vote, vote, vote, vote so matters.

It’s why you hear from both campaigns, “Go out and vote, vote, vote!” The numbers of Americans that don’t — even now, amidst all this controversy — would probably surprise you. So you look at how many votes has Trump lost, and I would say hardly any. You might disagree. You might think, “He’s had to have lost some, Trump. For crying out loud, the pandemic and economic downturns — and the guy at the top always gets blamed when things are going bad.”

Yeah? Okay.

How many votes has Trump picked up? Now, my friend that sent me this note believes many, a ton of votes Trump has probably picked up. He thinks that a lot of hesitant conservatives who didn’t know what they were getting and voted for Trump in 2016 really like it now. This is a group that we never talk about, either. The media makes it a point never to talk about this group. The group the media wants to focus on is the people that voted for Trump and regret it and wish they hadn’t and they’re never gonna do it again — except that group of is infinitesimally small.

On the other hand, the number of people who either didn’t vote or who tepidly voted for Trump in 2016 are probably very happy. They like what they have seen these past four years. They like what they saw before the pandemic. You would have to assume that lots of blacks and Hispanics because of the record low unemployment — and the Democrats haven’t done anything for ’em.

It’s the same old, same old.

It’s the same complaints.

It’s the same non-solutions.

Now the left is burning down cities, and we’re told that suburban women hate Trump? The left is burning down cities, they’re destroying private property, and we’re told that suburban women hate Trump? Now, how many votes have Democrats gained? You tell me. How many votes do you get when you promise to shut down police departments, defund ’em? How many votes do you get when you allow your own cities to burn, when you allow looting in your own cities to occur?

How many votes do you pick up when you purposely keep your city and state economically shut down? Don’t tell me this is the stuff that getting out the vote is made of. Don’t tell me that this is how you win an election, by allowing your city to burn, your state to burn, by allowing an economic shutdown in your city and state to continue with no end in sight. When you start talking about how many votes have Democrats gained…? These are questions the media never asks.

They love to ask, “How many people that voted for Trump can’t stand him now because of us? How many people have we persuaded that Trump is a reprobate?” That’s what they care about. But they don’t dare ask, “How many people who didn’t vote for Trump are going to? How many people that were lukewarm now really like what they saw and can’t wait to vote again? How many votes have the Democrats lost?”

I mean, the last Democrat… We’re talking about Obama. So you’ve got Biden. We didn’t really have anybody in that whole field, in the Democrat primary, not one of them… Folks, not one of those people ran away with it. Not one of them captured the minds and hearts of the Democrat Party. Biden is a surrogate. He’s a generic candidate for the power brokers in the Democrat Party who could not win the nomination.

What are the Democrats doing to gain votes?

Nothing!

It doesn’t stand to reason.

So the Democrats’ only play here is vote against Trump because of his personality. Well, I don’t think this is playing. “Today’s Trump vs. Biden poll,” one more time, “finds that the race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden has suddenly gotten much tighter. IBD/TIPP’s latest 2020 presidential poll update shows that Republicans are rallying around Trump, Biden is leaking Democratic support, and the gap among independents has narrowed.

“The latest … poll update shows the Democratic challenger leading [Trump] by 2.3 points, 48.1%-45.8%, in a four-way presidential poll of likely voters. Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen has the support of 3%, and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins 0.9%. Since the IBD/TIPP 2020 Presidential Election Tracking Poll launched on Monday, Oct. 12, Biden’s support has slipped 3.8 points, [down] from 51.9% to a new low-water mark of 48.1%.

“Trump poll numbers have gone the other way, rising 2.4 points to his new high-water mark of 45.8%. Biden’s lead peaked at 8.6 points in the Oct. 13 [IBD] poll. Biden’s narrower support reflects Trump’s gain, more third-party support and more voters who are undecided or decline to say whom they support. In a head-to-head…” Forget the four way. “In a head-to-head Trump vs. Biden poll, the Democratic nominee leads by 2.8 points, 49%-46.2%. Biden’s support has [dropped] 3.7 points since Oct. 12 … Trump’s support is up 3.9 points.

“Joe Biden’s lead among likely independent voters narrowed [again] to a 45%-41% margin in IBD/TIPP’s latest 2020 presidential poll update. Biden’s lead had ranged from 6 points into the double digits. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is now having a much easier time corralling Republicans than Biden is having in nailing down Democratic votes. Biden leads 90%-7% among Democrats. Trump leads 94%-4% among Republicans.

“Still, the latest Trump vs. Biden poll continues to highlight what could be a big problem for the president,” and that is what they portray here as “wayward 2016 Trump voters. Among people who voted for Trump in 2016, 7% say they now support Biden while 89% say they’ll back [Trump] again. Biden does better among Hillary Clinton voters: Just 3% say they support Trump, while 95% back [Biden]. In addition to faring better among 2016 Trump and Clinton voters, Biden gets more support than Trump among 2016 third-party voters (39%-30%) and nonvoters (57%-31%).”

But all of this is narrowing.

The next paragraph: “Shades of 2016 — In 2016, almost all presidential polls pointed to a Hillary Clinton victory over Donald Trump. The IBD/TIPP Poll was one of only two election polls credited with predicting President Trump’s 2016 surprise showing. TIPP, IBD’s polling partner, succeeded in picking up on the greater enthusiasm among Republicans for their candidate.

“The latest IBD/TIPP Trump vs. Biden poll has some similarities with the Trump vs. Clinton race. Republicans again seem more excited about their candidate. However, Biden’s 4-point lead among independents in the IBD/TIPP 2020 election poll is one important contrast from 2016. Trump carried independents 43%-42% in 2016…”

He still has some ground to make up to pull that off. The bottom line is that it is narrowing exactly like it did in 2016, and the other polls that are showing Biden still with a massive double digit lead here or a high single digit lead over there, once again, these polls don’t seem to have any backup. And they seem to be following the same course of action as they followed in 2016. Now, these polls ended up being, as you recall, dramatically wrong. So that’s the latest on the TIPP/IBD polling business.