The closeness of the race and predictions by the campaigns and analysts that the debates, especially the first one Tuesday night, could be decisive apparently has failed to generate the high level of interest that some had expected.

"I expected more interest this year than we found in a comparable survey four years ago," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "That year most people thought it was boring, most thought President Clinton was going to win. I would have thought the closeness of the race this year would have piqued interest in the debates."

He noted that Republicans are more interested this year, 53 percent to 45 percent, compared to 1996 because they have a better chance of winning. But independents are slightly less interested, and they are the voters Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore will be trying hardest to reach. Interest among Democrats is roughly the same as in 1996, about 45 percent.

Three in 10 said the debate will matter in deciding who they vote for, with 38 percent of independents feeling that way. Six in 10 said they have made up their minds.

Several new national polls out Monday show the race extremely close, with the difference between Bush and Gore within the margin of error.

A CBS-New York Times poll broadcast Monday by the network showed that likely voters rate Gore slightly higher on the questions of who is best prepared for the presidency, who would be best at negotiating with Congress and who has the ability to be an effective president. Bush was rated slightly higher than Gore on the question of leadership.

Meanwhile, a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that fewer than half of all Americans knew the candidate's positions on many key issues.

"With the election so close, by helping the undecideds better understand where these candidates stand on the issues, the debates can play a major role in determining the outcome of this election," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The likelihood of people saying in the Pew poll that they were likely to watch the debates increased with age, with 52 percent of voters over 65 saying they would watch. Just 32 percent of those ages 18-29 said they were very likely to watch.

The Pew poll of 600 registered voters was taken Sept. 22 through Sunday and has an error margin of 4.5 percentage points.

"In 1992, people were excited by the sense of a new generation, by Ross Perot, some younger people were excited by the Clinton candidacy," said Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a media think tank. "This election is not getting anybody's blood racing. These two candidates are not engaging people, not exciting people."

The level of interest won't be helped by the fact that Fox and NBC, two of the four broadcast networks, said they would show other programming Tuesday night. NBC later said it would offer stations a choice of baseball playoffs or presidential politics.

But one analyst said network programming decisions probably wouldn't make a huge difference because people have many other options between cable television and the Internet.

Organizers "have to be concerned with whether the debates will suffer the same fate as the Olympic games," said Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "Politics will not be the most intriguing spectator sport on the air at the time of the debates."