Campaign still deadlocked as candidates make final push before settling down to watch with the rest of the country

It may be the closest presidential election in 40 years, and it is the most expensive race ever. The campaign has fueled a cottage industry of pundits and consultants and saturated national and local news for weeks. And it's just about over.

Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush pulled out all the stops yesterday, trying at the last minute to grab some of those very few and even more precious undecided voters.

Bush leads in most national polls, though generally not by a statistically significant margin. The Washington Post tracking poll had him at 48 percent to Gore's 45 percent Sunday. But this contest rapidly has become an electoral college battle, with both candidates campaigning in states where the polls show the race could go either way.

University politics professor and presidential scholar Fred Greenstein said there is no way to predict the winner in tomorrow's election, but there are several important variables that could effect the race.

"Turnout is going to be hugely important," Greenstein said. "Rain would tend to suppress the votes of lower-motivated, less-devoted voters."

Greenstein said foul weather typically would hurt Democratic voter turnout. In farm states, however, he said rain could keep rural Bush voters at home, while more urban Gore voters might make it to the polls despite the weather.

Gore opened a 30-hour, non-stop campaign tour yesterday in Waterloo, Iowa. He was scheduled to run through three major battleground states, stopping in Flint, Mich., St. Louis and Miami before landing in Carthage, Tenn., to cast his own vote today.

Bush spent Sunday in Florida, fighting to secure a state that many thought should have been deep in his pocket by now. His campaign was scheduled to be in Chattanooga, Tenn., Green Bay, Wisc., Davenport, Iowa, and Bentonville, Ark. — touching both Gore and President Bill Clinton's home states — before returning to Texas for Election Day.

Greenstein said he believes this election has been characterized by mistakes on both sides.

"I think this is a kind of best-of-mediocres election. Neither of the candidates has set the election on fire," Greenstein said. He explained that most political scientists would have anticipated a Gore victory, but the vice president has been unable to capitalize on his advantages as an incumbent under a popular president.

"The political science wisdom is certainly that it should be a shoe-in for Gore. But he is not a terrific campaigner. He often turns people off. It has not been a first-class performance," Greenstein said.

State-by-state

Most state-by-state analyses of the electoral college show a small Bush lead, but the polls in several battleground states are so close that even a small shift in one direction could change the election's outcome.

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"The thing about our electoral college system is it produces a terrific multiplier effect," Greenstein said.

Some pundits have also wondered whether exit polling data in the East — which will be available to voters via the Internet to a much greater extent than in 1996 — could affect the numbers in key western states like California, Washington or Oregon. The television networks have traditionally agreed not to broadcast exit poll numbers until the polls have closed on the West Coast, but no such safeguard exists for the Internet outlets.

Despite the candidates' last-minute efforts, it appears it will be early tomorrow morning before a victor emerges. In the very close 1976 race, television networks declared a winner at about 5 a.m. the next morning.

Greenstein said analysts will be especially careful tonight in declaring a winner. In a close race, they cannot rely very heavily on exit polls to predict a winner.

"In 1948 when the pollsters all failed to predict the Truman election, they learned a lot of lessons," he said.