RUSH: Well, the Drive-Bys are all excited because Romney has announced he’s going back to Ohio tomorrow. On Election Day, Romney is going to Ohio, and the Drive-Bys are trying to interpret that as meaning it’s slipping away. Romney has to head back into Ohio on Election Day because it’s slipping away. The Drive-Bys are all excited by their own polling data.
My friends, I’ve been looking at all the data that you have been looking at. I’ve been trying to separate feelings from thoughts and come up with some sort of an educated prognostication. You know, common sense tells me this election isn’t gonna be close and shouldn’t be. And yet every poll, every single poll, has this race tied. Obama’s up one, down one, tied, doesn’t matter where you go, ’til you get into the internals, then it gets really confusing or it doesn’t make any sense.
I’m just gonna be honest with you, for the longest time — and you people that have been regular listeners know this — I have said that as we get down to the election, the polls are gonna reflect what’s really gonna happen because the pollsters want to get it right for the future. That has not happened. It has not happened. There’s not one poll that gives either candidate an edge, not one pollster is willing to stick his neck out here. They’re all saying that this is tied, every which way from Sunday, at least in the overall popular vote, national surveys. Now, when you get into the internals it looks a little odd, and we’re gonna do that here at the beginning.
There’s also something that, I guarantee you if a football game had a different outcome yesterday, you would be hearing nothing but this today. But since the Washington Redskins lost at home on a game before the election, it means, what is it,18 of the last 19 elections, that the out-of-power party wins. Honest, it’s called the Redskins Rule, and it’s so well known you can look it up on Wikipedia. In the 18 presidential elections that have taken place since the Redskins moved to Washington in 1937, 17 have been predicted by the team’s performance at its final home game prior to the election.
If the Redskins win at home, the incumbent party wins the presidential race, 17 out of 18 times going back to 1940. If the Redskins lose at home, the challenger prevails. Well, the Redskins lost to the Carolina Panthers. That means Romney wins. I guarantee you, if the Redskins had won the game, that’s all you would be seeing on the media today. I guarantee you. You can’t find it anywhere. It’s only because I know the Redskins Rule that I was looking this up, and I did see a little blurb in one of the pregame shows before the football game started yesterday. I just saw a tail end of the blurb and I wasn’t sure so I went and looked it up, and that is what it is.
Now, for example, let’s look at the latest CNN poll, the final CNN national poll. It has the race tied at 49. By the way, in none of these national polls is Barack Obama at 50, and they keep telling us, they’ve told us for decades, for years, for months, for weeks, that an incumbent who doesn’t get to 50 is in big trouble, and that traditionally has been true. Here are the internals of the CNN poll. The sample is Democrat plus 11. The Democrat turnout margin in 2008 was plus seven. They’re saying it’s going to be plus 11 Democrats tomorrow in this poll. In 2004 and 2010, it was even, the Democrats and Republicans were evenly split. In addition to all of this, in addition to a Democrat sample of plus 11, Romney is up 22 points with independents.
So I, as a standard, ordinary, average guy, look at this, this doesn’t make any sense, because you look at all the conventional wisdom. They tell you whoever wins independents wins elections. Independents are how you define a swing state, right? A swing state is where the independents determine the outcome, correct? That’s why so many states are now swing states, because the independents are up for grabs. So Romney’s winning the independents in every poll, double digits for the most part. So you have a CNN national poll where they’re tied at 49, Romney up 22 with independents, the sample is Democrat plus 11 — by the way, none of these polls factor 2010. The reason they don’t factor 2010 is because it wasn’t a presidential race and therefore you cannot compare turnout in any way, shape, manner, or form.
I so profoundly disagree with that but simply in common sense, not scientifically. I’m not a pollster, I’m just a commonsense observer. I look at what caused the massive 2010 Republican turnout and then I ask myself, has anything changed since 2010? Yeah, it’s gotten worse. The enthusiasm that got people out in 2010 I’m seeing at every Mitt Romney rally. I’m seeing Bill Clinton going into places they ought not have to go. Colin Powell, I guess, ladies and gentlemen, Colin Powell is Obama’s firewall in Pennsylvania. Those are the ads that Obama’s running in Pennsylvania today. Colin Powell, the titular head of the Republican Party. You’ve got Bill Clinton going to all of these places. You’ve got Bruce Springsteen playing concerts in all these places. You got everybody but Obama out there trying to gender up some sort of enthusiasm for him.
Meanwhile, Romney’s drawing crowds of 20,000, 25,000, 30,000, 15,000. The enthusiasm that we all saw in 2010 is there. The same issues that existed in 2010 exist today. There hasn’t been anything that’s gotten better. There hasn’t been one change in the nation’s direction that would cause people who were fit to be tied in 2010 to say, “You know what? I’m glad I did that, but everything’s okay now. At least we’re heading the right direction now, think I’m gonna go back to my traditional voting pattern.” That hasn’t happened. Now, that’s just common sense. That’s simply my common sense. I’ve got nothing scientific to back me up on this. All I know is that maybe two pollsters, and one of them is Dick Morris, bothers to factor 2010 into any of this. They’re all doing 2008.
So just to review, CNN national poll tied 49, Romney plus 22 with independents, a sample of Democrat plus 11. Now, the way Karl Rove would look at that or Dick Morris, well, you’re not gonna have Democrats plus 11. You might have Democrats plus two if that. So that’s a swing of nine points. Romney up 22 with independents. Don’t know how you factor that in. But they would tell you that this poll 49-49 is actually gonna be 54-46 Romney. That’s what they would tell you the CNN poll actually means.
But then I go back to: “Why would CNN put a poll out…? If it’s that easy to figure out this poll is wrong, why would they do it?” Well, the answer is: “Well, they’re in the tank for Obama and they want to do anything they can to help.” Yeah, I understand that. “And, Rush, they don’t care about after the election. They’ll sweep it under the rug and they’ll just say, well, they were surprised by turnout; that their poll was actually correct.
“Rush, there’s a built-in fix for this. They just blame it on their turnout model, not on their polling. They just say that if they’d had the turnout right, they would have been able to predict it. They are covered no matter what they do towards the end.” So that kind of thinking takes you to the point: Are they still trying to impact the results of the election? Do you believe that? (interruption) Do you believe that the polling units that are tied to networks or universities are still trying to impact the outcome?
(interruption) You could believe that? I’ve got a lot of people who could believe it, too. A lot of people would. But in doing that, you have to ignore the 49-49. You have to ignore, “The thing’s tied.” I’ve done that once and it came back to bite me. I was telling Snerdley earlier this morning, I think it was back in 2000, Paula Zahn hosted a show at eight o’clock on the Fox News Channel, and she asked me to be a guest.
So I showed up. It was, I think, two weeks prior to the election. This is the appearance where I told you the next day I got a call from an NFL owner attempting to alert me about certain things I had said, and why what I’d said was true and how it could be even more so. The owner, by the way, was Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders. I’ve never mentioned that before. But Al Davis has since passed on so I figured it’s safe to say.
Anyway, I said the race was either Gore plus one or two or it was tied, Gore-Bush. I said, “Paula, I just don’t believe the polls. I don’t think these polls are anywhere near accurate.” Well they were, as we all know. They were. In fact, Gore won the popular vote in 2000. So I’m a little reticent to just reject these polls. I’ve been bitten once doing that. But still, you know, all of my thinking says Romney big.
All of my feeling is where my concern is. But my thoughts, my intellectual analysis of this — factoring everything I see plus the polling data — it’s not even close. Three hundred-plus electoral votes for Romney. Let’s look at another one. The DC Examiner: “Team Romney is drawing satisfaction and a growing sense of confidence from a new CNN poll that, while over-weighting Democrats, shows that Mitt Romney is running away with independents…”
This is Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner. “Romney Winning Independents 59%-35%.” That is 24 points. Twenty-four points, Romney up independents! Folks, we’re talking major landslide if that’s true, and yet it’s a CNN poll that shows Democrats plus 11 and the race tied at 49-49. NBC/Wall Street Journal final national poll: Obama 48, Romney 47. Romney leads independents by seven. The sample is Democrat plus two.
If Romney wins independents by seven, he wins the election, and yet they’ve got their poll at 48-47. Rasmussen has it even, too. What is it now, 49-48 Romney? There’s not one poll that doesn’t have this race a dead heat. Not one poll. You watch the campaign appearances. Romney has the aura of confidence, inevitability, presidential. The crowd is the same way. The Obama that we see is petulant. He’s angry.
He’s reciting platitudes that come from a teleprompter. He’s aided and abetted by basically two people: Joe Biden and Bill Clinton. Romney has hundreds of Republican aficionados out all over the country stumping for him. Obama has just two or three, led by Bill Clinton. (Oh, plus Bruce Springsteen is out there.) It’s just amazing. Another one: “CNN Ohio Poll: Romney Up 13 Among Election-Day Voters.”
This is before Breitbart: “If you want to understand why voters no longer trust pollsters, look no further than the latest CNN poll of Ohio voters, showing President Barack Obama with a 50%-47% lead over Gov. Mitt Romney — a result that is within the pollÂ’s 3.5% margin of error, but which suggests a slight Obama lead.” Three points. “The internal numbers reveal that Romney is leading among independents by 2%, and winning Election Day voters by a staggering 13%,” meaning that most of the Republicans have not voted in early voting.
They show up on Election Day. “The lead for Obama is based entirely on the pollÂ’s survey of those Ohioans who say they have voted early, or who are likely to vote early.” But Ohio is not this weird, extreme, radical state that it would have to be to be supporting Obama here. You know, you look at the 2008 election. We have to remember what that was all about. That was about Obama as a generic.
You could make him whatever you wanted him to be. But nobody made him out to be a radical, extremist, anti-America, anti-capitalism guy. Nobody made him out to be that. That’s now what he is. It’s patently obvious. He’s also incompetent. Ohio… You look at what happened in Ohio in 2010. It was a Republican sweep! Bye-bye, Ted Strickland, governor. Bye-bye everybody. Hello, John Kasich as the governor.
Ohio was almost a bellwether in the 2010 midterms. What’s happened in Ohio to make everybody forget all of that from 2010 and now go back to an Obama who never existed? This is my intelligence guided by experience speaking, without looking at any of the polling data. Then you go over here and you look at the polling data and something’s not connecting here. Ah, the bottom line is: Nobody knows.
That’s what all of this means: Nobody knows. And everybody today talking about this for the most part is still gonna be trying to influence the way you and everybody look at this. This CNN poll has a lot of people commenting. That Democrat-plus-11 sample, that isn’t gonna happen. If it does, if it does, then nobody knew anything going on. There’s just no… I mean, they are…
The Reverend Jackson is campaigning in Chicago for the black vote today. Moochelle Obama was in Virginia on Friday at two black schools campaigning for the black vote. If that’s not a guaranteed turnout for Obama, there can’t be a Democrat-plus-11 energy out there. There just can’t be. Okay, now some people are going out on a limb. Michael Barone, who writes the Political Almanac and is as expert in all of this as anybody is, has gone out on a limb. He says Romney beats Obama handily, 300-plus electoral votes.
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RUSH: Now, in this CNN poll, one other thing about it. You have to go down to the 29th page of the PDF file to find their methodology. That Democrat-plus-11 sample? It’s page 29 on the CNN release. In other words, they don’t expect anybody to get anywhere near discovering that that is their sample in their poll.
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RUSH: By the way, folks, the notion of oversampling in all of these polls, these polls do not publish that. Well, they publish it. That’s not the correct way. They publish it deep in their releases, way back toward the end when they get into methodology and the internals, but when they write their accompanying stories, for example, the CNN poll that shows Obama and Romney tied at 49, you gotta go to page 29 to find the sample.
Now, the reason that the sample has become known is because we began to popularize this. We began digging deep. None of it made any sense. None of these polls made any sense. It was we here at the EIB Network who started digging deep and finding where in the release of polling data in the methodology did these units spell out the party identification. It’s always at the end and note it is never in the story. When you see the CNN story today, when you see them report it on television or if you happen to read their release, you will not see that the poll has a sample of Democrat plus 11.
They don’t report that. Neither does Pew. Neither does Public Policy Polling. It’s there, but if all you see is the TV report of it, or all you see is a news story, you won’t know it. But now everybody is digging deep and finding it because the only way they can have Obama as close as he is, is to oversample Democrats dramatically in all of these polls. Now, again, that’s my thinking. That’s my analysis. No feelings in that. On the other side of it, just like you, this causes some concern. Why would they be so blatant about it? Why would they be so wrong? Why would they willingly be so wrong on this? And this we could only guess. They don’t think they are, or they are trying to shape opinions still and they’ll come up with some excuse afterwards. Or they’re not, and that’s accurate.
Those are the options that we have when looking at all these polls. And then when you look at the polling data you have that either confirm or conflict with what you see. And there’s no comparison in what we see. Stevie Wonder was in Cleveland. They had, I think I read 200 people show up for Stevie Wonder — might be 2,000. No, it wasn’t that much. Either nobody knew that Stevie Wonder was there or nobody cared. This was in Cleveland. Obama’s rallies last Friday, he had one in Hilliard, Ohio — I think it was Hilliard or some small town. And the campaign said, “Well, we’re purposely going to small towns. We’re purposely drawing small crowds. We want to have a more intimate feel.” Blah, blah, blah.
Meanwhile, there’s Romney at 15,000, 20,000, 30,000. Romney had to reschedule an event today in Virginia, change venues. The venue he was originally gonna use in Virginia today was 1,900. They had to move it to a place that had the capacity for 10,000.
(interruption)
Blame Sandy for their polling data being wrong? Blame Sandy for the fact that only 2,000 people show up to see Stevie Wonder? I don’t know. See, the conflict, therefore, is real, and it’s a conflict that’s being created. I tell you, let’s go to the sound bites and have you hear some of the Drive-Bys who are in the tank totally for Obama, just so you get a feel for it. You’re gonna have to gut it up, folks. You’re gonna have to have strong resolve to listen to this stuff with me. Because it’s gonna conflict with everything you think you know. It’s gonna conflict with everything you think you feel. You’re gonna think you’re listening to people that live on a different planet, different universe.
Before that, though, that there’s one other thing. I want to take you back. For example, look at Ohio. Here’s the thinking again. What happened in Ohio in 2010? I just want to repeat this. John Kasich was elected governor, a Democrat was swept out. Ohio 2010 was the epicenter of that humongous landslide. Republicans picked up 50-plus seats in the House of Representatives. It was a Democrat blowout. They lost a total of 600 legislative elective seats all the way down to dogcatcher in precincts all across the country in 2010. It was the Tea Party uprising. It was the people of this country after two years of seeing what Obama was all about saying, “No mas, no mas. We don’t want any more.”
Now, in the two years hence, have Democrats all of a sudden in Ohio, have people in Ohio all of a sudden said, “You know what? I don’t like this Kasich guy, and I don’t like what we did in 2010 and I want to go back to the guy –” none of it makes any sense. Ohio being close based on what happened in 2010 doesn’t make any sense, but none of the pollsters are looking at 2010. It’s like it never happened. And of course for somebody in the Obama camp, 2010 didn’t happen. The last thing they want to do is focus on that because it was an outright blowout. In Wisconsin, same thing. Ohio is a mirror of what happened in Wisconsin. The people in Wisconsin are happy with what they’ve done there. And the people in Ohio are happy with the outcome of 2010.
In 2008 people were not electing a radical. They were not electing somebody they thought was anti-capitalist. They were not electing somebody that was gonna do harm to the economy. That’s the last thing they thought Obama was, right? Okay, so two years go by, four years now go by, and everybody knows Obama either doesn’t know what he’s doing or he’s got an entirely different idea about the way the country ought to run. But, whatever, it hasn’t gotten any better. It’s done nothing but get worse. There’s not one case the Obama campaign can make for their record. And yet we are to believe that people in 2010 who wanted no more of this have all of a sudden changed their minds and are now indecisive about this? I just cannot accept that.
My intelligence guided by experience tells me this is not how things happen. And Ohio, by the way, has never been a state that elects madcap radicals, not nationally. You might find a Kucinich in Cleveland or a Sherrod Brown, but nationally, the people that come out of Ohio, they’re dryballs. I don’t want to say that, that’s not the point. They’re fine people, but they’re not electrifying in one way or the other. They’re not known as radicals. John Glenn, he’s a Democrat, but he wasn’t a radical extremist, at least he didn’t appear to be. Howard Metzenbaum, look at the people Democrats have elected and sent to Washington. They’re not the kind of people that are all-in for a guy like Obama.
This is my brain talking. This is my brain informing me. My brain and my own analysis, independent of what the polls say. Then I look at what the polls say and none of this computes.
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RUSH: I tell you, Romney’s on a roll. He’s in Virginia right now at this very moment saying that every action Obama took on the economy did harm. Every action he took did harm! It’s undeniable. It is simply undeniable. Everything Obama has done has hurt the economy, has hurt health care. Everything he’s done has harmed the debt, has worsened the deficit. There isn’t anything that’s improved.
Nothing.
Now, little tidbit on these CNN polls. Remember, now, CNN today has the race tied at 49, Romney up 24 with independents, and a Democrat sample of plus 11. The Democrats had a plus-seven turnout advantage in 2008. In the last three CNN polls, Obama has come down from 50 to 49, and Romney went up from 47 to 49. The trend is Romney in the CNN poll. Now, if you just look at the CNN poll today: 49-49. Romney is up 22 with independents.
Over the last three CNN polls, Obama has come down from 50 to 49 and Romney’s gone up from 47 to 49. So Romney’s trending, and still… By the way, Romney is trending with plus 11 Democrats in their sample! Don’t just take one poll. Look at the rolling average or look at the last three, as we’re doing here. Romney goes up two points in the last three CNN polls with a plus-11 Democrat sample? Again, my thinking goes into gear. It doesn’t jibe. It doesn’t make sense.
Now, I mentioned the audio sound bites of the Drive-By types. Matthew Dowd… I don’t know what happened to Matthew. Matthew Dowd used to be a big Bush 43 guy, a major Bush 43 guy. He used to be on TV in 2000 and 2004 all over the place. He loved George W. Bush. He’s now in the tank for Obama. He was on Good Morning America today. Stephanopoulos said, “The president’s schedule today — and that’s his path for 270 electoral votes — Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio. That gets him the 271 he needs even if Romney wins all the other battlegrounds. Even if Romney wins Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, he can’t get there.”
Here’s what Matthew Dowd says…
DOWD: That’s the difficulty that the Romney campaign is faced with. The path to winning this Electoral College is so tight, it’s almost as if he has to draw an inside straight tomorrow in what’s gonna happen in this race. And he has to. In my view, if you take a look at Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, Mitt Romney has to basically go three-for-three in those states in order to win this race.
RUSH: Well, Matthew, I hate to tell you, but all your precious polls are tied. But, you see, these guys are going by nothing but polling data. They rely on nothing but polling data. They’re not thinking. They’re not adding their own thoughts to this. In fact, what they’re doing is they’re look at the polling data and attaching it to their bias and their preference and they’re allowing the polling data to confirm what they want to happen.
But I don’t think we’re getting intellectual honesty out of these people.
Here’s F. Chuck Todd. Now, he let’s go back. F. Chuck Todd, two weeks ago, said that if Obama’s below 50% on Election Day, he’s in trouble. There’s no other way around it. Well, he’s still below 50 and F. Chuck Todd is not saying that. On the Today Show today, Savannah Guthrie said, “We’ll run through some scenarios. The first one is the situation with the candidates neck and neck nationally. The president with a slight lead in key battleground states sets up a scenario potentially where Governor Romney could win the popular vote and lose the electoral college.”
What do you think of that, F. Chuck?
TODD: The very narrow path for the president means Pennsylvania stays where it is, Nevada stays in his column because of Hispanics, and then literally, he just wins Wisconsin and Ohio, and that’s it. He does it by one electoral vote, 271. This would mean all of these other states, all the southern states —
RUSH: Okay, you see a trend here? They’re all talking about 271. Every one of these people in the Drive-Bys have one path for Obama, in the sense that they’ve all gotten the memo. They’re all on the same page here.
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RUSH: Scott Rasmussen is out with his October 31st Summary of Party Affiliation, and Scott Rasmussen — as of October 31st, his most recent — has Republicans at their highest party affiliation he has ever recorded since he’s been doing this: 39.1% of the electorate say they are Republican, 33% say they are Democrat. That is a Republican-plus-5.8% margin, according to Rasmussen’s latest party affiliation poll.
It ain’t Democrat plus 11.
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RUSH: I must correct myself, ladies and gentlemen. There is a poll with Obama at 50%. It’s the Pew poll, and it was released yesterday. But there’s some fascinating stuff in this one, too. The Pew poll has it Obama 50 and Romney 47. There’s two things. The Pew poll data has it 49-49. Their projection is Romney 50-47. However, they admit in their analysis that Romney holds the edge on voter turnout. By solid margins, Romney supporters are more engaged in the campaign, are following news of the campaign closely, are more likely to vote, and yet Pew gives the Democrats a plus four turnout sample. They give the Democrats a plus four turnout sample while admitting Romney has all the enthusiasm. I’m sorry, to the thinking half of me, that doesn’t compute.
How in the world do you have an oversample of Democrats by four points and then admit that the Republicans have a turnout advantage and an enthusiasm advantage and your data shows 49-49? But their projection is 50-47. The answer is somewhat obvious, isn’t it? It’s so obvious, I can’t believe it. You know what I’m having trouble with? I was firmly convinced that all of these pollsters would want to be right at the end of this, and none of them apparently care about that. That’s what I’m having trouble with. None of them apparently care about that. It’s simplistic to say that it’s bias and the attempt to shape opinion. And yet that may well be what’s going on. I don’t know. Like you, folks, this stuff doesn’t compute.
In the CNN poll, Democrats plus 11 is not happening. On page 29, you have to read 29 pages to find that in their internals. Romney winning independents double digits. Romney with a turnout enthusiasm. Romney with the voter enthusiasm. And yet they give the Democrats a plus four turnout advantage in the Pew poll. So now I’m trying to figure out, “Okay, if Romney does win this big like Barone says, what are these pollsters gonna say, what is their excuse gonna be?” Well, let’s guess. “Well, you know, it’s really tough to find Republicans. They traditionally don’t like to talk to pollsters. We might have undersampled, and we just got the sample wrong. Democrats that told us that they were gonna vote didn’t.” I guess they’ll say we had the indicators right, things just turned at the last minute that they didn’t see, who knows, but it will be interesting.