By just before the election, the polls showed a HUGE Reagan blowout, and both sides knew it. Both essentially stopped campaigning the last couple of days before because it was all over by then. The pollsters and television news kept it secret, but they knew it. This came out later.
I remember voting and later attending a three-hour night class. At the halfway break in the class, some guys went over to the union for ice cream cones. They came back clutching their cones and said, "It's a landslide for Reagan." I was so surprised and pleased! No one knew ahead of times except the pollsters, the two campaigns, and almost certainly the newspeople. Everybody kept quiet. Actually the better polls are quite accurate, and the campaigns' own polls are VERY accurate.
The point is, polls this early (and the one quoted from Newsweek in 4/79) are not to be trusted.
I loved a comment one of the national anchors (I think it was David Brinkley) said the night of the 1980 election. Back then Republican states were shown in blue.
He said “The map is beginning to look like a suburban swimming pool.” Priceless.
I was only 17, so I missed out on voting, but I was very excited about getting rid of that idiot Carter.