XETER, N.H. - Richard Goss, a letter carrier, has a front-porch view of the presidential campaign, as evidenced by his mail sack bursting with political literature. But as an independent, he is also one of the more important players in the political drama, saying in classic New Hampshire style that he will make up his mind ''when I walk into the voting booth.''
A block away, speaking at Exeter High School, is a candidate who could win or lose depending on what lever independents like Goss pull. The candidate, Senator John McCain, has a ''maverick'' campaign, as he calls it. It seems scripted to appeal to independents, but McCain has concluded that he must win within the Republican Party.
Like many political analysts, the Arizona senator thinks that far fewer independents will vote than will party members.
There is reason for McCain's conclusion. While Democrats and Republicans are expected to turn out at a rate approaching 70 percent to 80 percent, Secretary of State William Gardner said last week that he expects only 30 percent of the 275,000 independents to participate. And McCain says the independent turnout will be even lower.
''They wouldn't be independent if they were real likely voters, so the percentage of their turnout will be much lower,'' McCain said in an interview after addressing an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 1,000 people. While he stressed that he is actively courting independents, he said he is focused on the idea that ''we are going to win with Republicans.''
''It will be very helpful to get the majority of that vote,'' McCain said of the independents, ''but we have to recognize the slice of it is not that big.''
McCain's statement put a note of contrarian caution on the conventional wisdom that Tuesday's outcome will depend on whether he or Bill Bradley, the Democrat challenging Al Gore, wins the independent vote. Bradley has stepped up his effort to woo independents, announcing the endorsement of one of the nation's leading independent figures, former Governor Lowell H. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut.
To be sure, with tight races among both the Democrats and Republicans, even a slight edge among the independent voters could determine the winner, and no campaign is discounting their importance. But as primary day approaches, the candidates are coming to the conclusion that the independent factor is being overemphasized.
Bill Dal Col, the campaign manager for Steve Forbes, said that most polls conducted by the media exaggerate the influence of independents. The Forbes campaign conducts internal polls in a different manner than most media. Their surveys focus on those who voted in the last primary. When that method is applied, the number of independents drops dramatically, as does support for McCain.
Under that method, Dal Col said, 18 percent of the voter sample is independent, while he said some media polls have a much higher number. Forbes's polling found that he is running much stronger than in some media surveys, including one conducted jointly by The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV.
The latest Globe/WBZ-TV poll put Forbes at third place, with 11 percent, while the Forbes campaign poll puts him at 20 percent.
''Typically, the media polls too high on independents versus who actually votes,'' Dal Col said. But he does not dismiss the importance of independent voters, saying they ''could clearly have an impact on a tight election.'
Gerry Chervinsky of KRC Communications Research, which does polling for the Globe and WBZ-TV, agreed that media polls include too many independents, but added that ''our polling screens very tightly.'' The Chervinsky poll includes about 20 percent independents.
Under New Hampshire law, independents are allowed to register either as Democrat or as Republican before they step into the voting booth, and then re-register as independents when they walk out. Thus, there could be a last-minute push toward any candidate, which explains why New Hampshire races often defy the polls.
But Dean Spiliotes, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, said the school's recent polling had found that the much-hyped suggestion that independents would go for either Bradley or McCain is exaggerated.
''One of the biggest ways this is overblown is this idea of a large bloc of independents sitting around trying to decide between McCain or Bradley,'' Spiliotes said. ''Most independents lean toward one party or the other. The interesting thing is they move around within the party.''
Spiliotes said that Dartmouth-Associated Press surveys have found that ''the independents who lean Democrat and were flirting with Bradley now are moving back to Gore. On the Republican side, they pretty much have been streaming to McCain the whole time.''
But Goss, the letter carrier, is an independent looking closely at both McCain and Bradley, partly because they trail the national front-runners, Gore and George W. Bush, the Republican.
''I'm ignoring the front-runners because I think they came into the campaigns thinking they had a lock on the electoral process,'' Goss said. ''I feel they should be given a wakeup call to say there are other people. That is the Democratic process.''
