t is a ritual in close election years, when academics and pundits issue dire warnings that the presidential candidate who gets the most votes might lose the election. And every four years, at least since 1888, the ritual ends this way: They're wrong.
But this year, some insist, the unthinkable might actually happen. And even if it doesn't, the possibility that a candidate might win the popular vote but lose in the little-understood Electoral College already has affected campaign strategy and helps explain some of the fluctuations in national polls.
''This year is the best chance of this happening since 1888,'' said Richard Bennett of American Research Group, which has conducted polls in all 50 states. The rationale comes down to this: Republican George W. Bush could win the popular vote by a slim margin, but Democrat Al Gore could take enough big states to win in the Electoral College and thus become president.
''Bush doesn't need more votes, he just needs to redistribute them so he can win more states,'' Bennett said.
Under the system of electing presidents established by the framers of the Constitution, the candidate with the most votes isn't actually declared the winner. The victor is selected according to the number and the size of states he has won, whether the state was won by one vote or a million.
Therein lies the potential for the top vote getter to lose the election. Bush is so far ahead in his home state of Texas and in a number of Western and Southern states that he is likely to rack up a large popular vote. By contrast, Gore's lead in many states is relatively small.
Thus, it is conceivable that Gore will narrowly win large states like California, while Bush will trounce the vice president in Texas and some other states. But under the rules of the Electoral College, the margin of victory doesn't matter. Even if Bush racks up the larger popular vote, Gore could win the Electoral College. A candidate needs 270 out of the possible 538 electoral votes.
There is one further possibility. If the two candidates are tied, or if neither wins the necessary 270 votes because a a third-party candidate has picked up a state or two, the race would be thrown into the newly seated House of Representatives, with the controlling party determining the outcome of the election.
The Electoral College hasn't had an impact on the outcome since 1888, when Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but Benjamin Harrison won in the Electoral College by 233-168 and became president. The other two occasions when the winner of the popular vote did not become president were in 1824 and 1876.
But it is less known that a loser of the popular vote nearly became president on five occasions in the 20th century. A study by the League of Women Voters found that a switch of between 2,000 to 42,000 votes would have changed the winner of five elections, including the races in 1960 and 1976.
For example, in 1960, John F. Kennedy won the election against Richard Nixon by 118,550 votes out of 68.3 million cast. Kennedy won in the Electoral College by 303-219. But a switch of fewer than 13,000 votes in five states would have given the Electoral College victory to Nixon. Nixon needed the following: 5,000 votes each in Illinois and Missouri, 1,200 in New Mexico, 1,300 in Nevada, and 200 in Hawaii, the League says.
This year's race is widely considered the closest since 1960. But most analysts consider a split between the popular vote and the electoral count unlikely.
Still, the mere possibility is having an impact on the national polls. For example, Bush leads in Texas, the nation's second most-populous state, by 30 percentage points. According to some analysts, that adds as much as 2 percentage points to Bush's standing in the national polls.
But the margin of Bush's lead in Texas doesn't matter, which is why some Gore advisers say they still view Gore as being ahead even when Bush leads in the national polls by several points.
Similarly, Electoral College rules have significantly affected the way the campaigns are spending money and time. Gore, for example, has watched his lead in such key states as California grow smaller in recent weeks. But because the margin of victory doesn't matter, Gore has all but suspended campaigning in states where he is confident of at least a small victory. The same is true for Bush.
That is also why, instead of running national ads aimed at all Americans, the campaigns are targeting the dozen or so states they view as most important.
Akhil Amar, a Yale professor who has testified before Congress about the Electoral College, said the system was established for one main reason: slavery.
When the Constitution was written, Amar said, Virginia was as powerful as California is today. It had a large population of slaves, who were not allowed to vote. But under the Electoral College system, Virginia was granted more electoral votes based on its overall population, including slaves, Amar said. The impact of Virginia's popular vote - all white and all male - was increased when electoral votes were counted.
''For 32 out of the first 36 years of the presidency, the office was occupied by a slave-holding Virginian and the Electoral College was designed to make that possible,'' Amar said.
US Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican who is an outspoken opponent of the Electoral College, said the system was set up not because of slavery, but because the nation's leaders felt the ''common people'' would not be able to evaluate the presidential candidates.
Calls to shelve the system every few years have failed. But there are proposals to modify it.
Under the current system, 48 states award electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis, with only Maine and Nebraska awarding votes proportionally. One suggestion is to change the entire system to a proportional award, which could prompt the candidates to campaign in most of the states.
