EW YORK - In the end, it wasn't even close.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the only first lady ever to run for the US Senate, didn't just beat her opponent, US Representative Rick Lazio - she trounced him.
As of 2 a.m., with 98 percent of precincts reporting, the first lady led 55 percent to 43 percent.
In good part, her margin, wider than all but one poll had predicted, was due to what appears to be the largest turnout of Democratic voters this state has seen in many years.
Clinton did well across the board. In New York City, she won by 1 million votes and a 3-to-1 ratio - even more than expected. She also won all the state's urban areas, trailed Lazio by just 4 percent in the conservative upstate region, won union households 2 to 1, captured 90 percent of the black vote, 85 percent of Hispanics, 60 percent of Jews, 61 percent of women - and even tied Lazio among male voters.
Based on exit polls, television networks called the race in Clinton's favor just minutes after the voting stations closed.
Not quite two hours later, around 11 p.m., she got the phone call from Lazio, conceding the race. Shortly after that, she, along with President Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, came out to greet a roaring crowd of supporters at the Grand Hyatt ballroom in midtown Manhattan.
''Wow! This is amazing!'' she began.
She then congratulated her opponent and wished him well, thanked her supporters, and pledged to work for those who did not support her, too.
''Today we voted as Democrats and Republicans,'' she said. ''Tomorrow we begin again as New Yorkers.''
The president and Chelsea, standing behind her, smiled broadly with tears in their eyes, the two of them holding hands.
Before the new senator spoke, Senator Charles Schumer thanked President Clinton as ''the man who put our country back on track'' - which drew at least as much applause as any line of the night.
Hillary Clinton benefited greatly from a massive and sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort in the last couple of weeks launched by labor unions, party organizations, black churches, and - not least - her husband.
The president made a whirlwind tour of New York City on the final weekend, focusing on Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, bringing cheering crowds to their feet with his exhortations to vote.
However, Schumer also said, ''she won this election not because she was first lady but because she worked hard. She won this election the old-fashioned way - she earned it.''
Around the same time, Lazio addressed a far more muted, even stunned, crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel just a few blocks away.
By yesterday morning, as a Lazio defeat looked likely, accusations began to fly in Republican circles over who was to blame. In a radio interview in Albany, Libby Pataki, the wife of Governor George E. Pataki, blasted New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for ''jerking people around.''
Giuliani, who had been the putative Republican nominee, dropped out of the Senate race last May after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Mrs. Pataki said the mayor ''hung around way too long'' after learning of his disease, calling his weeks of indecision ''selfish behavior'' and ''time that Rick could have used.''
Later in the day, Giuliani said Mrs. Pataki had apologized for the remarks. Her press aide, Suzanne Morris, said she ''was reflecting the frustration of a long and tough campaign.''
However, the remark clearly reflected the long-testy relations between the mayor and the governor, which began when Giuliani endorsed Pataki's opponent, Democrat Mario Cuomo, in the 1994 election.
The New York Republican party was in clear turmoil last night. Pataki's own fate is in question, since he had handpicked Lazio as Giuliani's replacement.
Pataki, meanwhile, can be expected to hurl blame at the state GOP chairman, William Powers, who launched a last-minute phone campaign that tried to link Hillary Clinton to Middle East terrorism on the grounds that she had taken donations from a Muslim organization. It is widely believed the calls backfired.
For many weeks, top Republicans also lamented that Lazio's campaign managers, who come from out of state, never presented a positive picture of the four-term congressman, banking instead on relentless attacks on the first lady's character.
Clinton, meanwhile, spent nearly every day, for more than 16 months, traveling across New York, educating herself as thoroughly as any politician in the state, reciting her positions on broad policy issues, and presenting specific programs for specific problems.
In the process, she practically erased her image of a ''carpetbagger.'' Exit polls showed only one-third of the state's voters were concerned that she is not a native New Yorker.
Her victory climaxed one of the most improbable political campaigns ever. It started a little more than two years ago, as New York Democrats were desperate to find a candidate to challenge Giuliani. The state's A-list - Andrew Cuomo, state Comptroller Carl McCall, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others - declined.
Representative Charles Rangel, the dean of the state's congressional delegation, proposed the idea of a Clinton candidacy almost as a lark. Surely she didn't take it seriously, at first.
But she had campaigned vigorously, and effectively, for Schumer in his victorious campaign in 1998 against three-term incumbent Alfonse M. D'Amato. President Clinton's impeachment battle was resulting in widespread sympathy for her. In July of last year, she mounted a ''listening tour'' of New York, and eventually jumped in.
Most polls showed a neck-and-neck battle from start to finish, first against Giuliani, then even against the relatively unknown Lazio.
