Vice President Gaius Baltar finds himself behind in the polls with two weeks remaining until the presidential election. Once Racetrack returns with data on the new planet, Tom Zarek realizes that it provides a crucial election issue: an opportunity for permanent colonization. He convinces Baltar to push the idea in his campaign, believing that people cooped up in the fleet for nine months will support it overwhelmingly. President Laura Roslin suspects that the Cylons may already know of the hidden world and that their stay should only be long enough to gather fresh water and to grow food supplies.