RUSH: I have also been thinking about all of these polls. You know, they’re all over the place. AP one point, IBD/TIPP at 3.7, CBS/New York Times at 13, NBC/Wall Street Journal Obama 80-20, they’re just all over the place. And here’s what I think happens. I think that these polls all start off by asking people if they identify themselves as a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, and the Democrats right now have about a ten-point lead over Republicans in self-identification because Republicans are tired of Bush, and they’ve forgotten about the war. When a pollster comes along who, as much stigma as there has been attached to being a Republican, I think a lot of people are telling pollsters they’re Democrats when they’re not, just like they lie to pollsters sometimes when they call ’em on the phone. This changes when there’s a popular Republican president of course, but what happens here is if the pollsters have a sample, 10% greater Democrat than Republican, then they’re going to overweight their poll, they’re going to go out and get seven to 10% more Democrats in the sample.
Now, this makes a crucial assumption. The crucial assumption they’re making is that there are no Reagan Democrats in this election, that a Democrat is a Democrat down the line and voting for Obama. So they’re assuming that there are no Reagan Democrats. Reagan Democrats may have no intention of voting for Barack Obama, and we’ve heard Democrats warn of this, Fast Eddie Rendell, (paraphrasing) ‘Some of these people in Pennsylvania are not going to vote for black people.’ We’ve had Jack Murtha say, (paraphrasing) ‘People in my district are racists and they’re rednecks.’ And we’ve had all these stories, they’re not out there now, but two weeks ago we had almost every day for five days, Washington Post, New York Times story on all the concern the Democrats had over Democrats who might not vote Obama. So I think what’s happening here is these polls are not accounting for those Democrats even though they’re doing stories on them, those Reagan Democrats and others.
Now, I’ve looked at the internals of some polls who suggest, some of these polls, I’m not going to name them, but seven to 12% Democrats aren’t going to vote for Obama. Seven to 12% of Democrats aren’t going to vote for Obama in a couple of polls, and I said, ‘I don’t know whether I believe this or not.’ But that’s what some of these polls are saying. But some Democrats won’t. That is the question that we need to answer if we want to put any real stock in these polls. The real question we need to answer is how big is the group of Democrats who will not vote Obama? And are they being measured accurately? See, I don’t think they are. I think the pollsters are assuming that every Democrat is going to vote Obama.
I don’t think they look at it as Reagan Democrats, because there’s no Reagan, and there’s no Republican conservative figure out there to attract these people, in the pollsters’ minds. They seem to be tipping too fast with too big a lead to Obama, and Obama’s behavior does not reflect somebody who’s got this thing battened down in a landslide, he’s not behaving that way. He’s going back to a 30-year-old playbook page about McCain is going to cut Medicare, lying in an ad about it, McCain is going to cut Social Security. Like I told you the last couple days, folks, I think this election is close, and they’re doing everything they can to depress Republican turnout, suppress it and depress it. And now there’s another story today about Sarah Palin dragging down McCain because of these clothing expenditures. Two days in a row we’ve had polling stories: Palin’s a bigger drag on McCain than Bush is. That’s palpable BS.