you know, martin van buren was able to be elected as andrew jackson's successor, 1836. if you're looking at a vice president able to do that, you have to go all the way ahead to george h.w. bush in 1988, elected to essentially ronald although very popular, was not able to hand the white house to richard nixon. nor was bill clinton, who was at the end of his presidency quite popular, able to do the same thing for al gore. we may be seeing some form of that syndrome tonight. >> we look at the polls, and depending on how this turns out, we may look at the polls and say what happened. is it harder to measure an electorate where so many people are voting against the other person, when so many people are holding their nose and got, let me choose one? how do you factor in that gut check, that moment of doing something you don't want to do? >> we're used to that in primary situation, which are usually protest moments. we're less used to that in a general election. normally you assume by the time people come to a general election, they've chosen one candidate over another. and i