Or they could turn out to be absolutely right. Ask President Goldwater. President Reagan defeated an immensely unpopular and incompetent president of the opposite party. Reagan also possessed immense (and genuine) personal charm. Fred Thompson's bounce in the polls was no surprise. He may lose it, and I am guessing he will. Actually, good polls are not usually wrong about who will win. Both Reagan's and Carter's campaign polls showed a huge landslide for Reagan in the last week before the election. They were correct, but remained unpublicized until much later. So the voting public was taken by surprise (I know, I was one of 'em). But the polls were not wrong; they were right, and the better ones continue to be largely correct. The rise in cellphone use and caller ID may or may not prove to be a problem for accurate polling. We don't know yet, but this election will probably tell quite a lot about that.
No. The polls are wrong about Rudy, because they are based on a false premise. If Rudy is the republican nominee, it will not be a one on one race. There is no way the American electorate is going to swallow 2 socially liberal New Yorkers as their choice. There will be a socially conservative third party that will split the Republican vote and deliver the White House to Hillary Clinton. It is her only sure path to victory.
You say that Reagan faced an enormously unpopular President. Hillary’s negatives are close to or above 50%. Is that what you would call “popular”?
As far as the polls being right, most of them showed a dead heat right up until election day. They were not wrong. Carter’s internal polls the weekend before the election showed the bottom had dropped out, but the MSM polls did not reflect this. Harris had the widest lead, I believe, which was Reagan ahead by 5 but within the MOE. The rest were dead even and one even had Carter up by a point or 2. None of them predicted the Blowout that occurred.