RUSH: Folks, there are a couple of polls out there today that are just outrageous. One is the CBS/New York Times poll. The other is the Washington Post poll. I’m telling you: They are irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about, and that is to depress you and suppress your vote. These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over. And Jan Crawford at CBS looks at one of these…
Grab audio sound bite number six. She even says that. This is over because of this Ohio poll. It’s not over! It hasn’t even really begun yet. I don’t want anybody thinking this is over. I don’t want anybody falling for this. I’ll analyze these polls and explain to you why they’re bogus as the program unfolds. But here, on CBS This Morning, is Jan Crawford reporting on a new poll showing Obama with the lead.
CRAWFORD: Both candidates are focused on Ohio this week. It is getting tough here for Mitt Romney. Our latest poll now shows the president is up by 10 points. The poll shows the president also has a significant lead with women voters in all three of those swing states that we surveyed. But here in Ohio the president is up by 25 points with women voters. Now, today Romney will be focused on the economy. That’s an issue that’s been the cornerstone of his campaign, but there’s trouble in our poll there for Romney, too! In our poll, for the first time, the president has taken a lead on that key issue in all three states.
RUSH: That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Obama’s ahead by 25 points with women in Ohio, and is finally taking a lead over Romney on the economy. Yeah, ’cause the economy’s gotten so much better in the last week. If it’s this good for Obama, I have a bunch of questions, but one central question: Why is he there? Why is he campaigning in Ohio today? If it’s that wrapped up and he’s got a 10-point lead, why is he there? Why not go to some other state where it’s not that big a lead?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s look at this poll. In fact, let’s look at all of them. The mainstream media’s… No, I’m not through with my Obama rant. I barely got started on that. I’m just melding it all here into one perfect presentation. The mainstream media’s efforts to suppress your vote is now at full speed. It’s getting tiresome to me, but it is taking place now at full speed. Every day I get e-mails from people, “So how do you feel about it today, Rush?” Every day people looking to me for guidance and leadership ask, “How do you feel about it today?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s lost today.”
(panicked) “You really do?”
“No, no, no. What do you expect me to say?”
It’s a roller coaster. It is. This is why… I talked about it yesterday. Why do you think so many people in this country are stupid? ‘Cause of polls like this! Obama’s leading Romney in Ohio on a question of who’s better suited to run the US economy for the first time in the campaign? Why does that make any sense? How does that make any sense at all? The economy’s getting worse! So this effort to suppress your vote and depress you at the same time, folks? They’re ratcheting it up.
They’re trying to wrap this up before the debates even start, because I think they’re worried about the debates. I think they’re trying to get this election finished and in the can by suppressing your vote and depressing you so that you just don’t think there’s any reason to vote, that it’s hopeless. They want you making other plans. We are told that according to the latest New York Times/Quinnipiac/CBS News poll, Obama is leading Romney by nine points in Florida, by ten points in Ohio, and by 12 points in Pennsylvania.
All among likely voters.
If that’s true, it’s over. If that’s true, it’s over, because there’s no way to recover that kind of ground in the number of days left. So the question is: Is this true? Is it anywhere near true? Well, the pollsters will all tell you, “What’s in it for us to be wrong?” But, folks, these pollsters can massage the sample in any number of ways to get what they want out of a given poll, and they will always be able to go back and say, “According to that sample, our poll was right on the money.”
The problem out there is Rasmussen. Rasmussen has the race tied at 46, and Rasmussen has been one of the leading polling units in presidential races for a long time. So here comes CBS, the New York Times, and Quinnipiac. They’ve got this race over in these three swing states, and yet, there’s Rasmussen out there today: 46-46. There’s Gallup out there. Gallup doesn’t show any of this, and Gallup’s got Obama disapproval rising. It’s all over the place: Nine points in Florida, ten points Ohio, 12 points in Pennsylvania.
What we aren’t told? Let me tell you what we’re not told (and this according to their own data): They oversample Democrats by 7% in Florida, where Obama is up by nine points. They oversample Democrats by 11 points in Pennsylvania, where Obama is up 12. They oversample Democrats. Here are the numbers. In Florida: Democrat 43%, Republican 36%, independent 1%. In Pennsylvania: 48% Democrat, 37% Republican, independents 1%.
So you have an 11%-plus advantage for Democrats in Pennsylvania and a 7% Democrat plus advantage in Florida. What they’re telling us… What’s this guy’s name at Quinnipiac? Miringoff. Lee Miringoff runs this. What he’s saying is that he expects the turnout in, let’s say Florida, to be 43% Democrats, 36% Republican, and 1% independent. That’s what he expects turnout to be. These guys are going back and using the turnout from 2004 and 2008. They’re ignoring 2010.
Every one of these polls is ignoring the actual turnout in 2010, which was a referendum on Obama and was a referendum on health care. They’re using turnout in previous elections where Democrats came close or won, say, congressional races — Senate races — in off-year presidential years, such as 2006. And, of course, 2008 when Obama won by seven, they go back and use that turnout. But does anybody expect that to be the case? Do they really expect that in Florida…
I saw a story. I can’t remember where. It was either the beginning of this week or late last week about Romney really gaining ground in Florida. He was just going gangbusters with crowds larger than anybody’d ever seen. And it was a news story, not a poll story. And here comes this thing, the CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac poll. So they expect that the turnout in Florida is gonna be 43% Democrat and 36% Republican.
In Pennsylvania, Mr. Miringoff is telling us that he expects the turnout in November to be 48% Democrat and 37% Republican. So 11% more Democrats are gonna vote in November in Pennsylvania than Republicans. That’s what they’re trying to make reality, by the way. This is what they’re trying to create. They want you so depressed, only 37% of you show up. In Ohio — in Ohio now — where they have Romney down by ten, they didn’t even report party affiliation.
They didn’t even ask party affiliation in Ohio. We don’t know what it is. Their own poll does not tell us. They list something called “N/A,” which I guess means “not available.” So we don’t know how many Democrats are in the Ohio sample. We don’t know how many Republicans or independents are in the Ohio sample. All we know is that CBS/New York Times is telling us that Obama is up ten in Ohio, he’s up 25 with women in Ohio, and in Ohio they think Obama is the guy to fix the economy.
But they don’t tell us what the party affiliation of the respondents in their poll was. Now, as we’ve noted before: The poll numbers do not reflect the party affiliation in the country as found by the latest Rasmussen poll of party affiliation which goes back to August 31st. On August 31st Rasmussen reported that people identified themselves as Republican 37.6%, Democrat 33%, independent 29%. So why are the polls oversampling the Democrats by anywhere from seven to 11 points?
Do they not believe Rasmussen?
Obviously not.
What are we to do, though? What are you to believe? Here’s Rasmussen August 31st: Latest national party affiliation, Republicans up four over Democrats. That’s never reflected in any poll. If, by the way, you do that, if you take all these polls and you change the samples… Some guy did this at Unskewed Polls or some such thing the other day. It’s been all over the Internet. If you do this, if you take every one of these polls and you exchange the sample for what Rasmussen found?
You find Romney up by anywhere from six to nine points, and, in some cases, ten points. That’s if you use an accurate sample of Republicans and Democrats as reflected by Rasmussen’s party affiliation reported on August 31st. They’re maybe even not even using Rasmussen. They may just be using actual turnout numbers in previous elections. You don’t even have to use Rasmussen. One more thing I want to add to this for you to consider.
In this CBS poll, there aren’t any independents. There’s 1% independent in the poll in Florida, 1% in Pennsylvania, and they don’t tell us the breakdown in Ohio. But yet Rasmussen found 29.2% of Americans identify themselves as independents. Mr. Miringoff at Quinnipiac here used 1%. There’s also no mention that all of their sampling is based on past exit polls.
How else are they gonna know? They don’t have access to the ballots, I don’t think. Maybe they do, but they’re using exit polls in order to determine the turnout in previous elections. They’re using exit polls! Well, we know how notoriously inaccurate they are. Then you throw in the fact that more and more people are not using land lines. More people use cell phones, but it’s land lines that the pollsters use.
No, I am not grasping at straws. I want to make this very clear. I am not looking at situation where I know but I’m not telling you, that I think it’s over. That’s not the case at all. I’m not sitting here trying to be falsely positive or optimistic or anything. I’m trying to analyze this stuff as honestly as I can. I don’t understand, when I hear Obama up 25 with women in Ohio, I don’t understand that. I haven’t seen anything in the news in the last three months, two weeks, whatever, to reflect that. What would have caused Romney to plummet by that much with women? What, on the other hand, would have caused Obama to magically surpass Romney on the question of who’s better able to handle the economy? What’s happened? Where has it gotten better and you can tie Obama to it? People say, “Well, it may not be that, Rush. It may just be that people think the incumbent is the best guy. They don’t want to change horses in the middle of the stream.”
Okay. Well, that’s not what the pollsters are saying. But, okay, if you want to say that. It could also be the Wilder Effect. It could be that people just don’t want to admit that they’re not gonna vote again for the first black president. In fact, I’ve got it here somewhere. I don’t know what number it is. Doesn’t matter. Don’t tell me, not enough time to play it right now. Some reporter asked Romney, “How are you gonna feel if you’re the one that actually defeats the first black president? I mean, what do you think that’s gonna say about you? What will you tell black America? You’re the guy that beat the first black president.” Jim Acosta’s at CNN, Situation Room, Jim Acosta interviewing Romney, and it’s sound bite seven and eight. Here’s the first one.
ACOSTA: African-Americans have a tremendous sense of pride that there’s the first African-American president in the White House. If you were to somehow beat the first African-American president, what would you say to the black community to assure them that you would be their president also?
RUSH: Yeah. So let’s point a gun at Romney and, say, “Okay, you beat the first black president. What are you gonna say to African-Americans?” And here’s what Romney said.
ROMNEY: I want to be the president of all the people of America. You don’t get into a race like this, with myself and my family, and do the kind of work and commitment that we have put forward without the passion to help all of America. And the people who really need the help right now are the people in the middle class, people who have fallen into poverty. I know how to get them help. The president doesn’t.
RUSH: I gotta take a break. We’ll be back. Don’t go away focusing. We’re only just getting started here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s something else going on with this polling data. Early voting is taking place. Everybody wants to be on the winning side. If you put a poll out, early voting in Ohio and Obama’s up ten, 25 points with women and you’re Republican, “Ah, to hell with it.” Do you know early voting, as many Republicans as Democrats vote but you just never hear about it. Everybody thinks early voting is Democrats only. That’s why you get depressed. You think the only people early voting are Democrats and the only people early registering are Democrats. We are out there, too. Don’t doubt me. Our grassroots people on the ground are getting this done. No, I don’t like early voting, but we’ll save that for another time. It’s there, it’s a reality, have to deal with it, but I think it’s bogus. We got one Election Day. And Obama’s out there, by the way, trying to suppress military votes in some state, I forget where that is. Maybe Iowa.
Why’s Obama in Ohio? If he’s 25 up with women, if he’s ten points up overall, why is he there? Other than he wants a slam-dunk win. Go someplace where it’s a little tighter and spend money there. What’s he doing in all these states that he supposedly has locked up? I’ll tell you something else about this, folks, and I want you to really consider this. I take you back to 2004. We had the first wave of exit polls at two o’clock and it looked bad. I mean, it was huge. Kerry was winning. Five o’clock, second wave, exit polls, even worse, Kerry winning. And there was a story that Bob Shrum, who was Kerry’s campaign guy, walked into his office and said, “May I be the first to say, Congratulations, Mr. President.” The polls hadn’t even closed. When the actual votes started being counted, the exit polls were as wrong as they could be.
And then what happened? The Democrats started accusing everybody of cheating. Remember? Fifty-five thousand votes in Ohio, if we just swung fifty-five thousand votes in Ohio then Kerry’d be president. They actually, these numskulls on the left actually believed the exit polls were right, the real votes were tampered with. So if you have nothing leading up to this election but one poll after another with Obama up five, up ten, up 12, up eight, up seven, and Romney wins, then what happens? Then you’ve got riots. I’m just throwing out a possibility.
There could be a lot of political reasons why all this… You got early voting, and you’ve got an attempt here to set up the idea that there has to have been some fraud because every poll had Obama winning by double digits or high single digits, and then Romney wins by five points, the left, you know these people. The first thing they’re gonna think of is they had the election stolen from ’em and they’re gonna start raising holy hell. The real vote will not matter to them if it’s that drastically different from all these polls. Hillary Clinton told an ACORN audience that elections were stolen in Ohio in 2004. She told an ACORN audience that. They’re not incapable of all this. They’re totally capable of everything I have been and will be describing to you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And the views expressed by the host on this program are now documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time. I’m gonna make a prediction right now: If I end up being right about these polls, I’m gonna shoot up to 99.8% by the time we get to December because I haven’t been wrong about anything. You’ve gotta be right a long time to move it up even a tenth of a point when you’re already up at 99.7 almost always right.
Now, this poll that we dissected in the previous hour, that’s just the New York Times/CBS/Quinnipiac poll. As we’ve noted before… I can’t repeat the first hour. I’ve got too much to do. If you missed the first hour go to RushLimbaugh.com and relive it. If you missed it, it’s too big. You are going to want to hear it. As we pointed out, these poll numbers do not reflect the party affiliation in the country as found by Rasmussen on August 31st.
Rasmussen found nationwide people ID themselves: 37.6% Republican, 33.3% Democrat. That’s Republicans plus four. You go conservative/liberal, it’s 40/20 — 40% say they’re conservative, 20% say they’re liberal (and 29% say they’re independent). Yet the polls are oversampling the Democrats by eight to ten points, 11 points in Pennsylvania. Eleven points! Again, that’s based on what they’re projecting the turnout to be in November. Of course, folks, just to rub some salt in the wound here…
I mentioned the Rasmussen poll that has Romney and Obama tied today at 46% each. If you include “leaners,” people that are undecided but tell the pollster they’re leaning in a particular direction, Romney goes up by two. If you include “leaners” in the Rasmussen poll, then you get 48-46 Romney. So in the Rasmussen poll, anyway, Romney is leading the race by two points, and Rasmussen was the most accurate in 2008. I have the list of which presidential polls were the most accurate in 2008.
Number one was Rasmussen, number two was the Peeeeeeew Center, number three was YouGov, number four Harris Interactive, number five was Lake/Tarrance, number six Diageo Hotline. Marist was 18, and that’s the CBS poll. No, I take it back. Quinnipiac. Quinnipiac. Yeah, Marist/Quinnipiac, same thing. Yep, 18. CBS 19 in 2008. Gallup was number 20. Reuters was number 21. CBS/New York Times was number 22. Newsweek was number 23. Fox was number 13.
CNN was number eight, tied with Ipsos/McClatchy. Number 11 was AP. Number 12 was the Democracy Corps. (Fox was 13, as I said.) The Economist was number 14. NBC/Wall Street Journal was 16. Rasmussen was number one! They now have Romney up by two, factoring in “leaners.” These are the polls that were the most accurate in 2008. So this CBS/New York Times poll (which is Quinnipiac) that has Obama up by nine in Florida, ten in Pennsylvania, 12 in Pennsylvania, and ten in Ohio?
These guys were 18th and 19th in accurate in 2008. Okay? So, yeah, I love throwing a little cold water on these guys with the Rasmussen poll. Now, there’s one more here. This from the Washington Post. It’s by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen: “President Obama is threatening Mitt RomneyÂ’s best route to victory in the electoral college, grabbing a significant lead over his Republican challenger in Ohio and a slender edge in Florida, according to two new polls by The Washington Post. …
“In the presidential race, Obama is ahead of Romney in Ohio by 52% to 44% among likely voters.” So the Washington Post has it eight points among likely voters. In Florida, it’s four points Obama: 51-47. You know, the gloves are really coming off here, folks. I think they’re trying to wrap this all up before the debate. I think they’re trying to wrap this up before the debate. They’re going all-in for Obama now.
You notice that in Ohio, Obama is only leading Romney by eight even when they oversample the Democrats by seven? In this poll, by the way… Are you sitting down? In the ABC/Washington Post poll, they oversampled Democrats by seven points! How in the world…? If I’m reading this right, how in the world do you do that? They oversample Democrats in Florida by ten points. It’s just unbelievable.
Imagine what the real numbers must be. There’s no way that there’s going to be 7% more turnout of Democrats over Republicans. It’s 7% that Washington Post oversamples the Democrats in Ohio. It’s ten points in Florida, seven points in Ohio. I would love to repeat some of the stuff in the first hour but I must move forward. But there could be a lot of reasons for this. Voter suppression, voter depression, set up the possibility of allegations of voter fraud.
They have all these polls with Obama running away with this, and then say Romney wins. Guess what happens? People blow a gasket on the left. There’s also early voting going on, and they know this stuff is not reported to reflect opinion. They’re trying to shape opinion with these polls.