early two-thirds of Americans say they're already bored with the 2000 presidential campaign, according to a poll by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
The poll marks the second round of an ambitious series of weekly surveys designed to gauge voter apathy.
The Vanishing Voter Project at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy plans to interview at least 1,000 Americans weekly through the November election - more than 50,000 voters in total - to check their political attitudes.
Early results show Americans find the 2000 campaign humdrum at best.
Sixty percent of respondents queried last week described the previous week's campaign as ''boring.'' Sixty percent also said the campaign is simply ''too long.''
The campaign is off to an exceptionally early start.
For this campaign, New Hampshire scheduled its first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 1 - the earliest date in history. Iowa responded by moving its caucuses to Jan. 24.
Two decades ago, New Hampshire usually held its primary in late February, with just a handful of states holding theirs in March.
Now, two thirds of the states have scheduled primaries and caucuses before March 15 as they jockey for better electoral position, said Thomas Patterson, co-director of the voting project and a Harvard professor of government. Most voters have barely begun to think about the November election by that time, he said.
''I think it does tax the capacity of almost everyone to follow this thing,'' Patterson said Wednesday. ''There are political junkies out there who can't seem to get enough of campaign politics, but golly, it almost gets to be a barrier to engagement.''
With so many primaries so early, Democrats and Republicans are expected to have all but decided their candidates before the spring.
Asked why they were not following the campaign more closely, 54 percent of 1,013 potential voters interviewed between Nov. 19 and Nov. 23 indicated that it's ''too early in the campaign.'' Twenty-two percent said they were ''too busy'' and 12 percent said they were ''just not very interested in presidential politics.''
The weekly poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, comes at a time when presidential voter turnout is ever dwindling. Turnout in 1996 dropped below the 50 percent level - the lowest since the 1920s.
The poll was financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and conducted by ICR of Media, Pa.
