"Buyer's remorse"

While the poll numbers look good for our side, one thing keeps needling me squarely in the brain: 2000.

While the late October polls in 2004 proved quite accurate, that was not the case in 2000. And you can argue that 2000 was a more similar election to this one. There was no sitting President, and it was a choice between a newbie "outsider" (albeit the son of an insider) and a more established entity.

Recall what went down between the final week of 2000 polling and The Big Day (emphasis mine):

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup tracking poll conducted October 29 through October 31 showed Bush, then the Texas governor, leading Democratic Sen. Al Gore, 48 percent to 43 percent. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

A subsequent poll conducted November 2 through November 4, released two days before the voters cast their ballots, showed the same results.

Gore, however, ended up winning the popular vote by about 540,000 votes. When broken down by percentage, both candidates had about 48 percent of the popular vote. Bush won the Electoral College, and thereby the presidency, by 5 electoral votes.

I know that Big Papa Nate touts the structural advantages in the electoral college, and other mathy things. But still, given the reliance on previously unreliable voters and other unique "issues" in this campaign, I am still a bit worried about the Buyer's Remorse -- the last minute "Do we really want this guy?" Which wouldn't be helped one bit by Osama bin Laden poking his nasty little head into our affairs, as he did around this date four years ago.