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Biden Fades in Iowa Poll

by Rush Limbaugh - Nov 2,2020

RUSH: Now, how many of you are familiar with something called the Iowa poll? The Iowa poll is a Des Moines Register poll that traditionally comes out on the Sunday before Election Day. And it is gospel. It has become a gospel poll. And the news in the Iowa poll on Sunday is devastating for the Democrats, devastating for Biden.

I have two different stories, two different analyses, if you will, of the Iowa poll. It’s the Des Moines Register, and the woman that runs the poll is considered the epitome of fairness and so forth because she really does care about the sanctity of her newspaper’s reputation, her poll reputation and all that, and it’s not something that’s used throughout the electoral season. It’s a one-off, a one-time thing. The released poll on the Sunday before the election is the one that everybody just huffs and puffs and pants and waits for. So one piece I have here is by John Ellis and it runs on the website Medium.

“Forty-one percent,” is how he begins the piece, 41%. He says, “I’ve been covering American politics for a long time and I can’t remember a number that so dramatically altered the political community’s perception of a presidential campaign as that number did, last night, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time.” Now, he wrote this on November 1st, so this is a couple days old.

“The source of the number was The Iowa Poll, which has been the gold standard for statewide polling in the United States for decades. The number itself was the percentage of likely voters in Iowa supporting Joe Biden’s candidacy for president. President Trump’s number was 48%, which put him ahead in the ‘horse race’ by 7 percentage points. There was nothing really remarkable about that, in context. Mr. Trump won the state in 2016 by (roughly) nine percentage points.” See, that’s not why it’s unusual. Stick with me. It’s not why it’s noteworthy. Stick with me.

“What was remarkable was Biden’s 41%. What made it doubly disconcerting was the way The Des Moines Register (accurately) described the poll results: ‘Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded…’

“Faded! Could there be a more terrible word in the last week of a presidential campaign? Off the record, Democratic elected officials and campaign operatives and financial backers have been saying throughout the campaign that their biggest fear regarding the eventual outcome was Biden himself. They saw him as an especially weak candidate and worried that he wasn’t ‘a closer;’ even if he was ahead going into the last week, victory could slip from his grasp. Up until last night, Democratic elected officials and political operatives saw the presidential race standing at somewhere between a narrow Biden win and a ‘blue wave.'”

In other words, the two options were gigantic Democrat landslide and narrow Biden win. Democrat political operatives last night did not see a Trump win at all, ever, anywhere. “In their ‘blue wave’ scenario, the Democrats would win both the presidency and a Senate majority and the Trump-McConnell nightmare would finally come to an end.

“That was the other piece of bad news in last night’s Iowa Poll release. It showed that Republican Sen. Joni Ernst had pulled ahead of her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. Her lead (46%-to-42%) was within the margin of error, but it wasn’t Ms. Ernst’s lead that Democrats were focused on. It was the ‘faded’ support for Ms. Greenfield, which almost exactly tracked the ‘faded’ support for Joe Biden.

“For Democrats, last night’s Iowa Poll was the worst possible news at the worst possible moment. It foretold close results in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It undermined the Biden campaign’s momentum and morale. And it fracked Democrats’ self- confidence. What had seemed reasonably certain no longer seemed certain at all.”

Biden, Theresa Greenfield, faded, faded. Now, stop and think for a minute. Up until this poll came out, the Democrats in Iowa and some of the other states had two scenarios: either a massive blue wave Democrat landslide or a narrow, narrow Biden win. But at no point and in no scenario did they factor a Trump win. Now all of that is out the window.

And there is another analysis on the Iowa poll from another website that focuses on how depressed and in denial Bill Kristol is over all of this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I’m not gonna get into the analysis right now ’cause I gotta get to the phones but here’s the other analysis piece and it’s PJ Media, Matt Margolis. “The Latest Poll Out of Iowa Foreshadows Disaster for Biden.” Let me tell you what’s gonna happen. They’re gonna be focusing on Pennsylvania because of what Nate Silver said and because of the reality on the ground.

If they don’t win Pennsylvania, they win nothing, and they’ve thought for 10 days that Pennsylvania was in the bag, and now they’re having doubts about it. Not the least of which is because these monster crowds that Trump has drawn in Pennsylvania. Good grief, folks! Put that picture up again, Brian. This is from Butler, Pennsylvania. We got a high-res version of it.

On that runway in the lower-right center is the president. You can barely see him in that shot. I don’t… It’s not an airplane runway. The runway, the walkway to the podium and the stage. That is just… That’s farther than the eye can see, that crowd size. It’s phenomenal. It’s unprecedented in American politics.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s great to have you here. Telephone number: 800-282-2882. Here is the second analysis piece of the Iowa poll, which was published a couple of days ago. You know, I’ll be honest with you.

I had forgotten how big a deal this is. When I saw these two pieces analyzing it, I had to dig deep into the memory synapses, little gray cells here. I had to go back to 2016 and say, “Okay, what did this poll say in 2016?” I had to reconstruct that, had to go look it up. It’s a big deal to the left, because the poll has apparently unassailable integrity.

So I shared with you the first analysis from John Ellis that was published at Medium. This is published at PJ Media. It’s Matt Margolis. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, polls shouldn’t be trusted. But hear me out,” he begins. Oh, by the way, the headline: “The Latest Poll Out of Iowa Foreshadows Disaster for Biden.”

So that’s two different analyses here that have the same conclusion.

Now, this guy, Matt Margolis, is focused on Bill Kristol because Bill Kristol is one of the leaders of the Never Trumpers. Bill Kristol is one of these phony, faux conservatives who’s been trying to get you to part with your money to send to him to prop up his so-called conservative efforts like his magazines and cruises while telling you that he is the intellectual brainpower behind conservatism being dominant in America.

And then Donald Trump comes along and renders all these Never Trumpers irrelevant, and they still haven’t come to grips with it. So there are a lot of people that want to focus on Kristol and David Brooks and all these other Never Trumpers and really take it to them, and I gather Matt Margolis is one of these guys. So he opens:

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, polls shouldn’t be trusted. But hear me out. Never-Trumper Bill Kristol recalled the significance of the last Des Moines Register (DMR) poll in a Friday [October 31, 2020] tweet prior to the poll’s release.” This is Kristol’s tweet on Halloween prior to the release of the poll: “‘I remember well my phone conversation with a smart Republican friend (sadly, pro-Trump) Sat. eve, Nov. 5, 2016, after the final DMR poll of IA at Trump +7.

“‘He said, if IA is +7, then Trump has a good shot in PA/WI/MI, and could win the whole thing. I was worried. He was right.’ Trump ultimately won Iowa in 2016 by 9.4 points. Not long after Kristol’s tweet, the final Des Moines Register poll was released, and showed a massive shift to Trump in Iowa, putting him, again, at +7 over Biden.”

From the poll, from the story: “‘Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe [Bite Me] has faded,'” there’s the word, “‘a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows just days before Election Day. The president now leads by 7 percentage points over Biden, 48% to 41%.

“‘Three percent say they will vote for someone else, 2% aren’t sure and 5% don’t want to say… In September’s Iowa Poll, the candidates were tied at 47% to 47%.'” Oh. So a month ago they were… September, rather. Two months ago, they were tied, and since then Trump 48, Bite Me 41. Yeah, 48-41. “J. Ann Selzer, the president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll…”

By the way, her reputation… “J. Ann Selzer’s reputation for polling in Iowa is solid, and Kristol seems unwilling to acknowledge that perhaps there’s been a late-breaking shift in Trump’s favor.” He is “resisting,” if you will. “‘In addition to fading with independents, Biden has lost ground with women.'” By the way, I don’t know how many of you are watching Trump rallies. Kathryn and I do not miss a moment of any of them.

I mean, we saw Trump dancing at Opa-locka at 1 a.m. today. We watch. They’re the best television going. Trump rallies are the best TV going, and Trump has been focusing on this news supposedly that suburban women don’t like him. He’s been directly reaching out to them in these rallies. He goes on a riff about he loves women; he loves suburban women.

He wants the best for suburban women, and then he tells the story about how the Drive-By Media is now making fun of Trump because he’s begging the women. He’s begging and reaching out and pleading with them, and he laughs about it, and he says, “No, you suburban women, you’re not gonna have it better with anybody but me.”

I love this! I love it. You know, you’re not supposed to tackle this stuff head on. You’re supposed to be subtle. But Trump is just letting it all out, folks. He’s all-in, like we all need to be all-in for him, and how do we do that? We vote. That’s when “all-in” on our side means. But, I mean, he’s just taking it right to them.

And he’s telling them that whatever he’s heard about him is wrong, that he loves them, that he loves everybody, that he wants the best for everybody and for everything and for every aspect of this country. And he doesn’t need any of this. He doesn’t need to put up with the abuse. He doesn’t need this.

And he doesn’t… By the way, he makes mention of the fact that he’s doing five rallies a day, but he doesn’t complain. He loves it! He absolutely loves these things. You can see it. He literally loves it. He loves being with the people who show up, and he lets them know how much he appreciates they’re there.

He’s got the empathy, he’s got the affection, and he has the humility. And it’s all on display at every one of these rallies. So returning here to this analysis of the Iowa poll, J. Ann Selzer. “In addition to fading with independents, Biden has lost ground with women. In September, he held a 20-point lead among women, which balanced out Trump’s 21-point lead among men. But today, Biden’s lead with women has shrunk to 9 percentage points, 50% to 41%. ‘We saw a huge gender gap that benefited Biden in September,’ Selzer said. ‘And while there is still a big gap among men — they’re going for Trump by a 24-point margin — it’s just a 9-point margin for Biden with women. And so there’s just an imbalance there. Before, we saw mirror images of each other.'”

Her point is that Trump’s margin with men has increased while Biden’s margin with women has decreased by a significant amount so that there is no way that Biden is keeping up.

Now, back to Matt Margolis. “If this shift has happened in Iowa, does Kristol really believe it hasn’t also happened in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin as well? He certainly would have argued that the DMR poll spelled doom for Trump in those states if it showed him behind. Kristol seems to be in denial that recent battleground state polls have been showing momentum for Trump. Republican Senator Joni Ernst also saw a boost in the DMR poll, with her now ahead of her challenger 46 to 42 percent,” which we also reported mere moments ago.

So Margolis is focused on Kristol, which is fine. There’s a lot of pent-up anger and frustration at the Never Trumpers, and it’s justified. The so-called Republicans out there now advocating for Biden, they ought to be, at the very least, ashamed of themselves. I mean, it’s unconscionable what these people have done, and it’s so selfish and self-focused. (interruption) What was that? (interruption) What was the Iowa poll, 26 — well, let me read the headline.

Here’s the headline from the Des Moines Register poll November 5th, 2016. Ready? Dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut. “Iowa Poll: Trump Opens Seven-Point Lead Over Clinton.” (gasping) Why, it’s all playing out the way it did four years ago, except now it’s seven, eight points that Trump is ahead. And Biden is fading.

Even CBS News has prepared a graphic. “CBS News Battleground Tracker.” This is YouGov. That’s the polling unit. Republican surge scenario. This is a graphic that demonstrates how Trump could surge to victory. I didn’t bother making a screenshot out of it for the Dittocam. We’ll put it at RushLimbaugh.com.

In this scenario they’ve got Trump at 279 electoral votes, Biden at 259. But the point is that CBS News has put together a graphic showing how Trump can win and keep winning, winning, winning. A week ago this would not have been possible. A week ago this would not have been created. A week ago CBS News would not have been talking about Trump winning.


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