ONROE, Iowa - The first of the presidential primary contests is just over a week away, yet the public's interest is as uncharacteristically mild as the weather in Iowa and New Hampshire has been this winter. Interest is even milder in the rest of the country.
Americans are only vaguely aware of the campaigning, maneuvering, jousting, and muscling for advantage in Iowa's Jan. 24 caucuses and New Hampshire's Feb. 1 primary, according to the weekly soundings by Harvard's Vanishing Voter Project. Last week's found that only one American in nine paid much attention to the political proceedings.
There are, to be sure, pockets of passion in political America, and, not surprisingly, most of them are in Iowa and New Hampshire, which, with few metropolitan areas and few minority citizens, are unlike the rest of the country in many other ways. Here campaign advertisements clog the airwaves; candidates are turning up at schools, community centers, and workplaces; and organizers are scouring the countryside for supporters.
Indeed, in New Hampshire, the most recent poll taken by The Boston Globe and WBZ found that 910 of likely voters have been paying a lot or some attention to the campaign.
But despite a blip last week in interest - the Harvard poll showed that the slice of Americans who could recall any news story about the campaign doubled in the past week, from 19 percent to 39 percent, probably because of debate coverage - much of the country seems to be snoozing when it comes to politics.
And if they are paying any attention at all, they certainly are not talking about it; the Harvard poll shows that 85 percent of Americans say they hadn't discussed the campaign with anyone. So far this year there is more zzzz than buzz to the campaign.
''There is a new period of normalcy around our election politics where people just don't get engaged or excited the way they used to,'' said Thomas Patterson, who directs the Harvard project. ''People now feel disconnected enough from politics that it's actually hard for them to engage.''
But why?
One reason surely is the early start to the campaign; many Americans wonder why they should focus on politics in January when the general election isn't until November. ''In places where there are upcoming primaries and caucuses, people have a sense of immediacy. But most of the rest of the country knows that the election is far away,'' said Gregory Flemming, survey director for the Pew Research Center, which conducts nationwide polls.
But there is also no deep strain of discontent in the country. With the stock market soaring and unemployment low, there is little economic distress, and with no big-power confrontation on the horizon, there are few national-security worries. And though opinion polls show public impatience with politicians and with the political system, they also show general public satisfaction with the direction of the country.
The percentage of Americans who say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States right now, according to a new Gallup Organization survey for USA Today and CNN, is an astonishing 69 percent - well more than double the 29 percent that expressed satisfaction seven years ago this month.
What especially worries political scientists and politicians is the degree to which younger people remain uninvolved and uninterested in the political system. The young people interviewed in both parties for the Globe/WBZ poll showed that 18- to 39-year-olds in New Hampshire were by far the least attentive to the campaign.
''I'm worried about young people who believe politics in Washington is controlled by money and that they don't have a voice,'' former senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a Democratic presidential candidate, said in an interview this week. ''The level of cynicism about money and politics has never been higher.''
In many of the weeks studied in the Harvard poll, less than 10 percent of young people nationwide said they were paying any attention at all.
''A lot of the habits we develop for the rest of our lives are developed when people are young, and if people don't get the civic habit when they are young they may not get it at all,'' said Patterson. ''We may be creating a generation where political interest is so low that it is a very minor part of their lives.''
Even in states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, active engagement is limited to a hard core of voters who function as political insiders - the dwindling bands of Americans who follow politics the way others follow sports, with great attention to the standings of the competitors and to the details that fascinate the aficionados - details like batters' performances with runners in scoring position, or candidates' proposals for eliminating the tax credit for electricity produced from poultry waste.
Those are the people the candidates' organizers are hoping to shepherd to the polls in New Hampshire or to far-flung caucus locations in Iowa, where participating in the first tests of the presidential election year requires far more commitment than simply flipping a lever in a polling station. In Poweshiek County in central Iowa, for example, organizers are struggling to figure out how to get a handful of their supporters to caucuses in places like Ellie's Soda Fountain in Montezuma, Beverly and Dan Malloy's home in Lake Ponderosa, and the community center in Hartwick.
''No one cares about this or pays any attention to all this stuff except for the insiders,'' says Barbara Trish, a Grinnell College political scientist, who studies public participation in politics. ''But the insiders really do care. They live and breathe it at this time in the season. It's a core that's scrambling to get people to caucus sites or that is thinking strategy all the time.''
Among that group, events like yesterday's Republican debate in Des Moines are important. An Iowa Poll taken this month showed that two-thirds of likely Democratic caucus-goers have watched at least some of the debates so far in the campaign. ''Those people pay attention,'' says David Hudson, who was the Iowa state director for the now-defunct GOP campaign of former vice president Dan Quayle. ''We know we're first. We know we're making a big decision.''
But those are the insiders. ''Some of the others - people who read a newspaper daily, identify with a party but are not passionate about it - are also tuned in,'' said Hugh Winebrenner, a Drake University political scientist and dean of caucus experts. ''But even here it's an insiders' game, and the insiders are paying attention.''
Both parties' goal is to attract 100,000 people to the precinct caucuses a week from tomorrow. But the chances of doing so are slim, in part because none of the candidates is generating much excitement. The contender with the strongest position in the state, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, has such a robust lead in the GOP contest here that his supporters have less incentive to turn up at a caucus location on a Monday night in January than they might if their candidate were facing a difficult challenge.
Alan Keyes, a Republican presidential candidate, said the public's lack of interest in politics indicates troubling attitudes that pervade American society. ''There is a malaise in our country,'' Keyes said in an interview at the Monroe Prairie City High School here, ''that is a symptom of our moral crisis.''
