It's popularly believed (at least by the handful of people that I've overheard lately) that polls don't mean anything, and the actual results of today's election will be far different from what the media says it will be.  I tend to agree with that theory, up to a point*.  But I was curious to see if that viewpoint bears up against the historical evidence from the 2000 and 2004 elections, which as you may remember turned out to be toss-ups.

Here are some results from a random selection of polls conducted prior to those two elections. 

2000 Bush/Gore http://www.pollingreport.com/2000.htm

• ABC 48/45
• CBS 44/45
• CNN 47/45
• FOX 43/43
• NBC 47/44

2004 Bush/Kerry http://www.pollingreport.com/2004.htm

• ABC 49/48
• CBS 49/47
• CNN 49/47
• FOX 46/48
• NBC 48/47

With that in mind, here are the last poll results before today's election.

2008 McCain/Obama http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08gen.htm

• ABC 44/53 (?) http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=6174126&page=1
• CBS 42/51 (11/2)
• CNN 46/53 (11/1)
• FOX 43/50 (11/2)
• NBC 43/51 (11/2)

I think you can draw your own conclusions.

* I also think that obsessive reporting of poll results has a brainwashing effect on the uninformed or undecided -- it's human nature to go along with what everyone else is doing.