Why I Disagree with Most National Polls: My 2016 Final Predictions

Reuters photos:, Carlos Barria, Carlo Allegri

All in the Family and Maude were two of the most popular television shows in the early 1970s. Both were the brainchild of liberal producer Norman Lear, and each sought to argue — some might say propagandize — in favor of liberal politics. The main character in All in the Family was a working-class man from New York named Archie Bunker, while the eponymous lead in Maude was a suburban, college-educated woman from New York named Maude Findlay. Archie was ignorant, bigoted, and vehemently conservative while Maude was talkative, ostentatiously “liberated,” and vehemently liberal.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that our current contest is, in the eyes of the national media, a rerun of this TV contest. Both candidates live in New York; indeed, Clinton lives part time in Chappaqua, N.Y., mere miles away from Maude’s fictional home in the very real upper-income Westchester County town of Tuckahoe. In this view, Trump is simply a more vulgar Bunker while Clinton is an ethically challenged Maude. And was the case 40 years ago, it’s clear today that those who try to determine such things want the rest of us to prefer Clinton/Maude to Trump/Bunker.

Back then, America didn’t go along with the elites’ judgment. Blue-collar whites loved Archie and made the show the most watched in America for an unprecedented five straight years. Maude debuted in 1972 to excellent ratings but could never dislodge Archie from his perch. After four top-ten finishes, Maude quickly slipped and was canceled after six years. All in the Family, meanwhile, never dropped below the twelfth spot, and a sequel featuring Archie alone ran for another four years with superb ratings throughout. Thirteen years after his first appearance, Archie Bunker still attracted tens of millions of viewers each week.

Donald Trump has spent the last month crisscrossing America and stopping at places that normally never see presidential candidates, like Eau Claire, Wis. All the off-the-beaten-track places where he’s campaigning are bastions of whites without a college degree, the modern-day equivalent of the people who flocked to Archie. He’s banking his entire candidacy on the idea that the Bunker family is still there and that, once mobilized, they can make the veteran TV entrepreneur the Number One show in the country.

Read the rest on Henry Olsen's predictions HERE.

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