The caveat of a "decisive" win by either candidate. I think it is pretty clear that there won't be anything remotely close to a decisive win this year: the election will be too close for one or the other of the candidates to win with a majority.

Now, I may be wrong about that, along with all the pundits and pollsters. But as of midnight 02 Nov 04 on the US' east coast, that was how they were describing the likely outcome of the race to the finish: whomever wins will do so by a razor thin margin that will not give a mandate to either candidate.

In other words, it will be like the 1992 election between Bush I, Clinton, and Perot. Only the third column in this race will be the non-voting majority of the electorate, depriving either candidate of a mandate, rather than a 3rd party so-called "spoiler".

The non-voters will most likely be the spoilers of this election, short of a miracle happening with voter turnout. Now, that is possible, but based on recnt past electoral history, when large numbers of new voters were registered, they didn't turn out on Election Day.

This time could be different, I grant you. We will have a larger turnout than in 2000, of that I'm quite sure. But it still won't be enough to beat the non-voters, and declare a mandate for one side or the other.