[Breitbart] Veteran pollster Pat Caddell passed away Saturday at his home in Charleston, SC, at the age of 68.Caddell was a Breitbart News contributor and regular guest on Breitbart’s SiriusXM radio programs. His willingness to challenge conventional political wisdom ‐ combined with his decades of campaign experience ‐ set him apart as a strategist who got things right when so many others got them wrong. This was strikingly obvious in 2016, when Caddell was the sole pollster to understand Donald Trump’s voters and the New York builder’s path to victory.
Long before Trump threw his hat in the political ring, Caddell became famous for helping elect another outsider. The self-taught pollster and native of South Carolina was instrumental in getting the nationally unknown governor of Georgia elected president in 1976.
Caddell’s insightful analysis of the changing political landscape of the American South helped steer Jimmy Carter’s campaign to victory by latching onto broad themes and focusing resources into key states. His role was so crucial to Carter’s success that after Carter won the Democratic Party’s nomination in the summer of 1976, his campaign manager, Hamilton Jordan, told a reporter: "You know why Jimmy Carter is going to be president? Because of Pat Caddell ‐ it’s all because of Pat Caddell."