In 1984, Reagan won everything but Minnesota, his opponent Mondale's home state. It was expected that he would win big. In the weeks before the election, Democratic party literature was urging voters to turn out because polls had been wrong before, citing the 1936 Reader's Digest poll.

In 1936, Reader's Digest surveyed a self-selecting group of 2 million Americans, most of whom had cars, telephones, or subscriptions to Reader's Digest: in other words, were wealthy for the middle of the Depression. It predicted an Alf Landon landslide. Obviously, that didn't happen. The fact that the 1984 Democratic Party was leaning on that as an example is clear evidence that the writing was on the wall in the fall of 1984.