Poll Position

(Some cynics are already predicting what 2004's October Surprise will be: Osama bin Laden, conveniently captured the weekend before the vote. But warnings that terrorists may try to disrupt the election have forced political strategists to consider this macabre question: What would happen if there was another September 11th? Much would depend on the nature of a preelection attack. Some argue that a terrorist strike immediately before the election would spark Americans to rally 'round the president, similar to the way they did after 9/11. If it came further out, Kerry might be helped, as it would give him time to question why the administration failed to protect the country from another attack.)

Nov. 7: Election Day. No clear winner emerges and the post-election campaign begins. Meanwhile, America's pollsters breathe a sigh of relief. The final preelection polls were almost uniformly close to the mark. The 10 major surveys in which interviews were conducted up to Election Day all forecast an extremely close race, though most had Bush narrowly ahead. On average, these polls were off by only 1.1 percentage points on the estimates for Bush and Gore. The error on Nader was 1.3 percentage points. Seven of the 10 media polls leaned to Republican Bush, while three had Gore narrowly ahead or found the race tied. Four years earlier, eight of nine nine major polls erred in favor of overstating Clinton's support. (For the record, the Post-ABC final daily tracking poll on November 6 correctly estimated the share of the vote won by Bush -- 48 percent -- and Nader -- 3 percent -- but underestimated Gore's -- 48 percent -- by 3 percentage points.)

December 12: The Supreme Court votes 5 to 4 to halt the ballot recounts in Florida, making Bush the 43rd president of the United States .

December 13: Gore concedes victory to Bush. "It's time for me to go," he tells a nationwide television audience.

Postscript: And then, finally, the campaign that wouldn't end was over. In some ways it had been the "Seinfeld" election: It wasn't about anything in particular, at least anything important -- alpha males and earth tones, college grades, hanging chads, opaque court rulings and the dusty workings of the electoral college. The specter of Bill Clinton haunted the election from beginning to end, and still haunts Democrats with what-ifs. What if Gore hadn't run away from Clinton? What if he had sent Clinton to campaign in the final days before the election? What if . . .

Contrast that with this year, when life-and-death issues command the attention of voters: the war on terrorism, the continuing bloodbath in Iraq, jobs and the economy. And unlike four years ago, the public is paying attention: Nearly eight in 10 Americans said in July they were following the campaign. Only five in 10 were similarly engaged four years ago.

One finding revealed by Harvard's yearlong tracking surveys in 2000 stands as a poignant and altogether fitting epitaph to the 2000 campaign. According to Harvard's polls, citizen involvement in the race -- as measured by people's thoughts, conversations and news exposure -- was far greater after Election Day than at any point during the campaign. "The Florida wrangling captured public attention in a way the campaign itself did not," concluded political scientist Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Will the 2004 campaign end in a bang or a whimper? Will democracy be elevated by enlightened debates on the fundamental issues of war, peace and prosperity, or dumbed down by a robo-campaign waged with clashing sound bites and 30-second attack ads seen and heard by voters in a handful of battleground states? Like the outcome of the race itself, it's much too early to tell.

Keep watching the numbers, and expect the unexpected.

Richard Morin is director of polling and Claudia Deane is deputy director of polling at The Post. They will be fielding questions and comments about this article at 1 p.m. Monday on washingtonpost.com/liveonline.