EW YORK -- They are voters Hillary Rodham Clinton should own, but doesn't.
Voters like Karen Barth - mid-40s, Jewish, Harvard MBA, an ''independent with Democratic leanings'' who ''detests'' much of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's ''value system.''
Yet Barth is undecided in the year's hottest US Senate race - a race about to get even hotter as Clinton plans, finally and officially, to announce her candidacy today.
Wilda Hess and Robin Gelburd should also be Hillary enthusiasts. Both of them are lawyers who voted for Clinton's husband twice, and who view Giuliani as a ''brusque'' man who ''carries a grudge.''
But they, too, don't know whose lever they will pull come November.
And then there's Lenore Portnoy, a former teacher who has voted Democratic in nearly every election since John F. Kennedy, and who fears that Giuliani wants to ''wreck the public schools.''
Still, Portnoy wavers.
With Clinton scheduled to launch her campaign today in a packed auditorium at the State University of New York/Purchase, near her new Westchester County home, many Democrats voice concern that she has not yet captured her most natural constituents: independents, Jews, and especially women.
The hesitation of women is striking. A year ago, when she first contemplated running for the Senate seat, polls showed her outgunning Giuliani among women by 20 percent. Now, the two are tied. Among white women, one poll suggests, Giuliani may be 18 points ahead.
None of this means her candidacy is doomed before it formally gets underway. The polls are inconclusive, although they generally put Giuliani six or seven points ahead. And of course there are 10 months before the first vote is cast.
Still, it is telling that Clinton's five months of touring the state seem to have done little to improve her standing. In fact, the travel may have served to underscore doubts.
Why should that be? Several undecided women, interviewed last week, provide a range of clues. They agree with her on social issues, and would love to see New York elect a smart woman to the Senate. But there's something about Hillary Clinton that gives them doubts.
Barth, the management consultant, lives in a liberal neighborhood of Brooklyn and works on Manhattan's Upper West Side - perhaps the quintessence of Hillary Country.
''I'm a little embarrassed to say this because I usually don't care about personalities,'' Barth said, ''but I don't like her. She's not my model of a modern woman. I don't admire what she's done with her career, getting to where she is on her husband's coattails.''
Barth also called herself ''disturbed'' that Clinton ''doesn't seem to have a competent bone in her body.'' She cited the health care fiasco in the early days of her husband's presidency. And she saw Clinton as having run a ''bumbling'' Senate campaign - most notably the misstep in the Middle East, where she sat as Yasser Arafat's wife accused Israel of gassing Palestinian children, then kissed her on both cheeks. She waited until the next day before denouncing the remarks.
''I'm not one of those people who feels Israel is the only thing that matters,'' Barth said, ''but it was a pretty stupid situation to put herself in. ... It looked like she can't think on her feet.''
For many Jews, who form just 12 percent of the state's electorate but are a crucial element in a Democratic coalition, Israel is paramount. Clinton and Giuliani are tied among Jews; Democrats usually need a 3-to-1 edge to win. And one Democratic political consultant, who asked not to be identified, saw the incident with Mrs. Arafat as ''fatal'' with many in this critical constituency.
Portnoy, the former schoolteacher, who lives in Dix Hills, Long Island, matches that view. ''I like her stand on education,'' she said, ''but I had a family that died in Auschwitz, and I'm concerned whether she will protect Israel.''
For other Democrats, the issue is simpler still. Ask Hess, a retired lawyer in White Plains, not far from the Clintons' house in Chappaqua, why she is reluctant to support her new neighbor, and she replies: ''Carpetbagger.''
Nearly half of those polled in every survey consider it an issue that Clinton has never worked or lived in New York. ''What is she doing here?'' Hess said. ''It seems she wanted to be a senator and this was the most convenient place to do it.'' She added, ''A lot of my friends feel the same way.''
Some Democratic women draw on a deeper, more visceral feeling about the first lady: They just don't like her. Gelburd, the health-care lawyer, who lives in Larchmont, a few towns away from Clinton's Chappaqua, has seen her speak at the annual breakfasts of the New York Women's Agenda, a professional group to which she belongs.
''I've been mesmerized by her speaking ability and her intellect,'' Gelburd said, ''but I just feel she is so rehearsed. It's hard to see a chink in her armor, and it's off-putting. I'd like to know she has a spontaneous reaction, some internal core, but I don't get that.''
Not that she's wild about Giuliani, but, she said, ''at least there's something very real, spontaneous, heartfelt about him.'' And, as a suburbanite who works in Manhattan, she appreciates ''improvements Giuliani has brought to the city.''
Gelburd says friends, other professional women in their 40s, feel the same way. ''There's no true affection for her,'' she said. ''I don't get a lot of sense of people rallying around her.''
Still, there is ample time for Clinton to recover. Even these four skeptical women say they might end up voting for her because they have problems with Giuliani, too.
Her campaign in recent weeks has emphasized the issues, seeking to make the case that what she stands for is more important than who she is or where she's from.
If the first lady does regain her momentum, the surge is likely to come from the undecided.
A pollster, John Zogby, is analyzing a sample of 8,000 undecided voters, and some patterns are emerging. Overall, 10 percent of voters have not made up their minds, but for Jews this number climbs to 13 percent. ''That's a very big number,'' Zogby said.
The up-for-grabs vote also includes a disproportionate number of senior citizens and independent voters, Zogby said.
One group with few if any doubts are African-Americans, who favored Clinton, 86 percent to 8, in the Zogby poll.
''Hillary's got no problems up here,'' said Willie Kathryn Suggs, a Harlem real estate broker. ''We all like her a lot, and we hate Giuliani.''
A decisive factor in this election, especially if it stays tight, may be how heavily blacks turn out to vote. This is a crucial factor for Clinton because she does not hold the dominating lead in New York City that a Democrat usually needs to carry a statewide race.
The rule of thumb is that a Democrat must win the city by more than 2 to 1 to offset the Republicans' likely strength in the rest of the state, which is more conservative.
However, the latest polls showed Clinton barely holding on to 2 to 1 in the city. Giuliani led her in the suburbs by more than that, and led her upstate by 15 points.
Some Democratic activists say Clinton's chances will soar only if Giuliani commits a serious blunder - which, given his hot-headed tendencies, is not out of the question - or if a conservative faction splits.
This, too, is not impossible. Not since 1974 has a Republican won statewide office without the support of the Conservative Party. And its chairman, Mike Long, says he will not support Giuliani unless the mayor comes out against partial-birth abortions. Giuliani, who favors abortion rights as much as any liberal Democrat, said recently that he saw no reason to change his stand.
A Conservative candidate could take 300,000 votes from Giuliani. The candidate for the Right-to-Life party, which will not endorse the mayor, will draw tens of thousands.
But these scenarios of Republican self-destruction reflect a fear among Democrats that their own candidate, who just a year ago was greeted with wild ovations whenever she visited, might be unable to win on her own appeal.
