What is stupid is that you didn’t grasp what I said.
Late polls always converge to the real voter sentiments because polling organizations are trying to save their reputations for future business.
You cite polls only in the last weeks of the campaign, when pollsters were done with vote persuasion and drifting toward reality.
In 1980, polls in September, August, July, back to January average well in Carter’s column, especially after he knocked off Kennedy. Reagan was thedemocrat’s preferred opponent in those months leading up to the last weeks.
You’re talking to someone who worked in that campaign.
And those same polls had the democrats maintaining the Senate. Reagan coattailed a sweep of 8 democrat seats to bring along the first Republican Senatein decades. The polls were wrong there too.
These are polls taken right after the last debate, late by today’s standards, but not late at the time. Early polls looks better for Carter because that reflected reality. People misinterpret polls as future predictions when they are just a snapshot of sentiment at the time. They move towards reality because reality moves towards reality.