[Kaslin]

Ronald Reagan was the first president I voted for in the 1980 general election. Rush describes exactly how I felt during the primaries. I thought, like so many, oh he is just an actor. I voted for John Anderson. I voted for Ronald Reagan in the general election and I did not regret it.

I voted for him again in 1984 primary and general election.

[Faith65]

The real answer-

the dems have gotten better at stealing elections.

[Buckeye McFrog]

We need to start working on a Constitutional Amendment to ban early voting.

[Reily]

I voted for Phil Crane in the primary. I viewed Reagan then as too liberal & not enough of a libertarian Constitutionalist.

[PermaRag]

Another big difference is the number of anti-American racists and welfare animals on the voter rolls, all permanently chained to the Democrat plantation.

If Mitt Romney was wrong about his so-called 47%, it was that he had the figure too low and it only ever moves in one direction.

[MeganC]

Rush is forgetting that the election may end up hinging on the hundreds of thousands of fictitious Democrats who’ve been registered to vote across the country.

The vote fraud is far worse now than it was in 1980 and where it will be obvious is in precincts that go for Trump at the polling place while going 50:1 in mail-in ballots.

They can still steal this election from us and I have not one doubt that they’ll try.

[bigbob]

Rush is correct here, but Pat Caddell’s essay is probably the single best thing written about the 2016 election, and I really encourage FReepers to find that thread and read the whole thing for themselves.

[NYer]

Thanks for posting! I remember the 1980 election as well. It is one of the last times the State of NY turned red.

Rush also devoted a great deal of time to the poll numbers showing Clinton up. He makes an excellent point:

You look at the size of these Trump rallies. In Minnesota, one of the Powerline guys was reporting, he was out driving around yesterday and maybe on the way to church, I forget exactly the specific reason he was out, but he encountered a line of human beings a mile and a half long to get into a Trump rally. He encountered a parking lot that had never existed before where all of the cars that brought those people to the Trump rally.

It's this way everywhere Trump is going. The crowds are massive. They are lining up for hours to get in. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is drawing 200 people in Pennsylvania. Tim Kaine drawing 30, 35 people wherever he goes. Hillary Clinton is drawing 10,000 people but she needs Jay Z and Beyoncé in very little clothing in order to get that 10,000. She's got Springstein going to Philadelphia tonight. Why wasn't Jay Z and Beyoncé and Hillary in Philadelphia on Friday, why wasn't that enough? Springstein is going in there tonight.
Polls Are Still Being Used as Weapons -- And Nobody Knows What Will Happen

[odawg]

The early voting thing that prevents a late surge is nonsense. The pressure is on the pundits to come up with something original sounding to fill up air time and make themselves look brilliant.

What has been called a late surge is merely people acting on what has been in the back of their minds for a spell.

[Aetius]

One big difference? That would be demographics. Reagan carried about 58-59% of whites in 1980 and won a landslide as a result. Bush the Elder did about the same in 1988 and won a similar landslide. W did about the same in 2004 and won an uncomfortably close reelection. Romney carried about the same and lost easily to Obama.

I hope Trump wins. I think he has a decent chance, but demographics make it much harder for him than it was for Reagan.

[T-Bird45]

I was in the US Army in W. Germany so I had to vote absentee. In fact, “Voting Officer” was one of my extra duties. I sent off for my packet and received it in time to vote and return it. My wife’s packet was never received. The fact that absentee ballots rarely get counted is disconcerting.

[Elsie]

Between Today and 1980 is about 36 years.

CHOICE killed ~36,000,000 future American citizens in this amount of time.

[Frapster]

hard for me to not recall all of the ‘Romney in a landslide’ posts back in the last election. Part of me wants to jump into the hype but part of me subscribes to ‘once bitten, twice shy’. Regardless of the outcome the work must continue and the solution for what ails our country is and always will be in our own hands.

[erlayman]

The polling was bad because it was basically limited to Gallup but I believe internals of both candidates showed that Reagan held a slight lead even before the debates. He of course surged over the final weekend which may be another difference with Trump.

[joesbucks]

What this boils down to is every 4 years Rush trots out 1980 as the example reason to ignore the polls when we're behind.

Rush constantly uses polls when things look good. Says they can't be trusted when they look bad. Trump has largely done the same thing. In the primary when polling was going his way, he cited polls. When things look bad in the general, they're rigged.

[noiseman]

Although we live in Colorado, where they have unfortunately decided to go to a virtually all mail-in vote, my wife and I are holding on to our ballots and dropping them off tomorrow. I just don't trust the folks running the precincts anymore to not tamper with mail ballots, or at least to get enough early information to help them know how many fraudulent votes to create to make up the difference. The less they know until the last minute, the better.

So I wonder how many others on our side are thinking and doing the same thing (in those states where it applies)? Could be an election day surge if that is the case.

[AlanGreenSpam]

Could it be that the first-time voters who are motivated by Trump are less likely to do early voting and absentee ballots?

Instead, they want the experience of “going to the polls” for the first time.

Lots of Trump followers are voting for the first time. So that factor could sway the actual poll results on election day toward Trump.

Maybe I’m grasping for straws, but...

Comments anyone? ________

[alternatives?]

I wonder how much of the late “movement’ in 1980 was just bias in the early polls? If it wasn’t really “movement” the we could end up with a big surprise tomorrow despite early voting.

I am heartened by the appearance of Obama who looks somewhat down but I thought Obama looked somewhat down in 2012.

[YogicCowboy]

No.

The real difference is that Reagan helped bury his own movement by naively trusting the Democrats with amnesty.

Demographics have changed. California is lost.