Sorry, but you are cleverly selective in your use of certain polls to come up with your accusation.
One poll, DMI, is an outlier. Throw that out and you will see a close polling with pluses for both Carter and Reagan. If you look at the October 26 polling, they are balanced and within the margin of error.
Also, you are not recognizing a trait of the professional (and frequently biased) polling groups, that after using polls early in the campaign to shape and influence voter sentiment, as Election Day approaches they start polling towards the eventual outcome, because they want to protect their reputations for business in the next election cycle.
Just look at the early polling in several past campaigns - Carter leading Reagan the old B-movie actor, by double digits; Mondale leading Reagan by double digits (he lost 49 states); Dukakis leading Bush by 17 points (another landslide).
In two weeks, polls will be somewhat closer to reality as these pollsters try to protect their reputations. Then they’ll be saying stuff like “we saw the last minute changes” or “the undecideds broke for Trump” or other nonsense. (By the way, there no undecided. They are people who are already decided but just think it’s none of your damn business.)
“Sorry, but you are cleverly selective in your use of certain polls to come up with your accusation.”
That is a list of every major poll, I was not selective.
“One poll, DMI, is an outlier. Throw that out and you will see a close polling with pluses for both Carter and Reagan.”
False, CSR was also +10 points for Reagan. And ABC/Harris, while not showing 10points, had Reagan +5.
Remember, the final debate between Reagan and Carter was Oct 28th, just weeks before the election, so there was late movement.
Lastly, just step back and take the bigger view. Leading up to the 1980 election. Reagan was ahead in 22 of 27 polls, Carter led in ZERO polls taken after Oct 30.
It is just stupid to say that Reagan’s win was a surprise, or that the polls didn’t see it.