People often overlook two things: 1) Taking the word of just one pollster as Gospel - no matter who the pollster - is just not very smart. 2) National tracking polls in a Presidential race are interesting, and give a good indication of the national voting totals, but have next-to-nothing to do with the electoral college.
A variety of polls (Zogby, POA, WSJ, etc.) showed a very close national race in 2000. That's what we got. National totals: Al Gore - 48.4%: George Bush - 47.9%.
One thing to watch out for is pollsters who play games all throughout the race, then have their final poll be accurate. Zogby is one of them.
The LA Times poll had Schwarzenegger consistently trailing Bustamante throughout the recall race - until their final poll before the election. One of their polls had Bustamante with 35% and Schwarzenegger with 22%