WASHINGTON ¨C Whenever I read polls about a forthcoming U.S. election, the 1980 election in which Ronald Reagan and the Republicans swept the board and changed the country springs to mind.
But that vote didn¡¯t break the Republicans¡¯ way until the final weekend before election day.
The late Sen. John Culver of Iowa, who lost in that Reagan landslide to the still-in-office Sen. Chuck Grassley, told me afterward that he and other Democrats who lost then didn¡¯t pick up on the electorate¡¯s negative feelings until the Saturday before the vote. Then-President Jimmy Carter and his entourage only realized the Saturday night before the Tuesday vote that he was going to be defeated.
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