RUSH: It looks like the final Gallup is out, and it’s 49-48 Romney, and in no poll that I could find is Obama higher than 48%. In no poll is he over 48%. I can’t find a poll where Obama is over 48% Well, maybe there’s one where he’s at 49. I mean, CNN has him at 49%. He’s not at 50%, anyway. Again, just to repeat: Rasmussen’s out with his final Summary of Party Affiliation, as of October 31st.

This is a huge sample of people that Scott Rasmussen asks are they Republican or Democrat or independent or what have you. He has the Republicans at their highest party affiliation he’s ever recorded since he’s been doing this. Basically it’s Republicans plus six: Republicans 39, Democrats 33. The actual number is 5.8. We’ll round it up to six points. Rasmussen had the exact turnout in 2008 at Democrats plus seven.

So he has a track record here.

I’m just throwing this all into the hopper because what we’re doing here is we’re comparing what we think versus what everybody in the establishment’s telling us, and the two don’t jibe. So then you end up with a conflict of what you feel versus what you think. In my case what I think always triumphs over what I feel. What I think, I’ve got no fear. No fear on the thinking side of this.

Now, you tell me if this matters. Bruce Springsteen is in Madison, Wisconsin, and he’s performing in front of 18,000 people. You think, “Oh, man! Oh, wow.” Until you remember that Springsteen and John Kerry on the same day in 2004 turned out a crowd of 70,000. Does that mean anything? Springsteen and John Kerry in 2004 had crowd of 70,000 in Madison, Wisconsin. Today, it’s 18,000.

Barely 2,000 people in Cleveland for Stevie the Boy Wonder last week. That was so small, it didn’t even get commented on. There was barely any mention of it. There was one local story and that was it. Then you have all of the data on the ground. You got the polling over here that shows the race today but then no matter where you go, you see that the Democrats’ early voting advantage is either way down or wiped out.

We’ve been chronicling all of that last week as the early voting numbers came in, and the same thing with the absentee requests. And then we see that Obama’s gonna do an interview either today or tomorrow with Ryan Seacrest. Now, nothing against Ryan Seacrest, but that’s an interview with your base. That’s not a broaden-the-base interview. Then we got Moochelle Obama on Friday trying to get the black vote at two black colleges in Virginia.

You got Bill Clinton and Colin Powell in Pennsylvania. All these media people are talking about, “Obama’s got Pennsylvania wrapped up. Yeah, he’s got Minnesota wrapped up.” Apparently not! You see, because they’re on the ground working those states. And I will guarantee you that those states that they’re in — Pennsylvania, Minnesota — are the last places they thought they’d be the day before the election. No way.

I mentioned Michael Barone. Michael Barone admits that he’s going out on a limb here, and he says he could be wrong about a couple swing states. But Michael Barone is not just anybody. Barone is the gold standard of election prognosticators, and also postelection analysis. I mean, this guy goes precinct by precinct by precinct after every election and puts together what is called the Almanac of American Politics.

It tells you who voted for what, where, when, why in the smallest burghs and precincts all over this country. He knows the American electorate almost on a precinct-by-precinct level. In election night coverage, they’ll start talking about some county in Montana you’ve never heard of and he’s intimately aware of it. Just to give you an example. He says what the polling data indicates, that independents are breaking big for Romney.

Independents are what define a swing state.

Am I right about that? I mean, a swing state is called a swing state because they’re independent people who go either way. Independents. So if Pennsylvania is now a swing state, then independents are the determining factor. Independents are breaking for Romney all over the place. He says the Republican turnout is gonna be higher than the Democrats. Well, every bit of evidence that we’ve seen so far indicates that that’s true.

It was in 2010.

I’m sorry to keep going back to that, but I think I’m the only guy that’s looking at 2010. It’s making me wonder why. Nobody is calculating 2010. I’m talking about the professionals when you turn on television. I don’t care what it is, I don’t care what network, you don’t hear any of these people talking about what happened in 2010. I know they don’t think it’s an apples-to-apples comparison, but it is better than a 2008 comparison.

Because 2008 was a fraud election. In 2008, Obama was an entirely different candidate. In 2008, Obama was Mr. Perfect. People that voted for Obama — and it was only 53%, by the way. Let us not forget that. It wasn’t some massive landslide in 2008. It wasn’t this whole country voting for Obama. It was 53%. Yep, it’s a majority, but it’s not commensurate with what everybody thinks or thought Obama’s wild, massive, uncontrollable popularity was.

It was just 53%.

But back in 2008, Obama was Mr. Perfect.

By that I mean you could make him whatever you wanted him to be. He was an empty canvas. All the circumstances came together. The American people were tired of Bush, they were tired of the war, they were tired of torture, tired of all of it. They were tired of the economy, tired of the media beating everything. They’re tired. And here came this guy that they portrayed as a messiah.

He was gonna end all the strife! There wouldn’t be any more torture, wouldn’t be any more discord, wouldn’t be any more partisanship. Believe me, to people that voted that way, that was huge at them. That’s gone. There is no such candidate today. In 2010, the electorate turned out to reject Barack Obama, and nothing has changed except it’s gotten worse — which, to me, 2010 is a far-more-relevant turnout model and election model than 2008 is, because 2008 is gone.

That candidate’s gone, doesn’t exist. They can’t get that back. There’s no magic. There’s no magic. There’s no messiah. There’s no empty canvas. There’s no magical fix. There’s no, “Gee, we’ve never seen a guy like this before.” There’s no, “Gee, man, this guy is smart! This guy, he can solve anything.” That’s gone. At best, he’s a total incompetent. So I go back to 2010 in all these swing states and I look at what happened with the Tea Party, and nothing’s changed, other than to have worsened.

I haven’t seen any slackening of enthusiasm for what happened in 2010. The Tea Party has only gotten bigger. The Tea Party’s ground game has only been improved. The grassroots are deeper, and yet everybody wants to go back to 2008. “Well, that’s right, Rush. You just don’t know what you’re talking about. 2008 is a presidential race, 2012’s a presidential race. The 2010 were midterms. You can’t count on midterms. People always vote against the incumbent in the midterm, and so forth.”

Not always.

They didn’t vote against Bush in 2002 in the midterms.

I’ll never forget it. I was on the election night coverage that night on NBC, and they were stumped. So, anyway, here’s Barone and basically he says Romney’s gonna win handily. He’s got Romney at over 300 electoral voters. So does Dick Morris, so does Karl Rove, so do Larry Kudlow. There are a number of people that do, for their own reasons. Barone is predicting Romney’s gonna win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Virginia.

He said that scenario will have been Romney 315 electoral votes to Obama’s 223.

So even if Barone’s wrong and Romney loses Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he’d still win the election if everything else Barone thinks is right. He says he can still lose a couple swing states and still win this. I listen to the Drive-Bys, and they’re talking about Obama’s path to 271. I don’t hear anybody talking about Obama’s path to 300 plus. Even among the Drive-Bys, you’ve got a narrow Obama win, a narrow Romney win, or a Romney blowout. But I don’t hear anybody talking about an Obama blowout, and there certainly isn’t one indicated anywhere in the polling data.

So the bottom line from Michael Barone is Romney 315, Obama 223, and he says that sounds high for Romney, but he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. “Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That’s bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president. But it’s also true that most voters oppose Obama’s major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery.”

I cannot tell you, folks, I cannot overemphasize, it would be impossible to exaggerate the role race plays in Drive-By Media analysis and hope. I cannot exaggerate what a factor that is. That is the primary factor in the coverage Obama got in 2008. It’s a factor in why the media’s ignoring Benghazi. It’s why the media’s doing everything they can to avoid any negative coverage of Obama. It’s about race and their view of the civil rights movement and their overall opinion, the liberals’ overall opinion that the deck is forever stacked against African-Americans. It will never be a level playing field for them. It’ll never be fair. This country doesn’t have it in its capacity to be fair to blacks because of slavery. Nothing will ever make up for it, and so, I’m telling you, it’s what animates ’em. And I know this because I’ve talked to enough of them about it. I’ve heard what enough of them say about it to know exactly what I’m talking about.

I could give you other real-world examples to illustrate how I’m right about this, but it’s not necessary for what we’re talking about today. So maybe some other time I will do that. But there’s other things out there. The Scott Walker recall, Wisconsin. Three times Democrats thought they had that in the bag, three times. They didn’t even get close. And what was the polling data on the last Scott Walker recall? Neck and neck. Have the Democrats won anything since 2008? They lost the Walker recall. Look at the Chick-fil-A boycott. That just came out of nowhere, and that was not covered, either. Real world, Realville. The signs are everywhere. But somebody tell me, what significant elections have the Democrats won since 2008. They lost Weiner’s seat. Huma Weiner’s husband got beat by Bob Turner. They lost Weiner’s seat in a sex scandal. That’s usually a resume enhancement for Democrats.