Q: Why is Florida so important?

A: Not counting Florida, Bush has won 29 states for 246 electoral votes. Gore has won 18 states plus the District of Columbia for 255, with 270 needed for victory. Florida's 25 electoral votes will determine who will be the 43rd president.

Q: Who won the popular vote?

A: Incomplete national popular vote totals show Gore leading with 49,145,560 votes, or 48.3 percent, and Bush with 48,947,577, or 48.1 percent. The difference was 197,983 votes with 99 percent counted.

Q: What about the Electoral College?

A: A candidate need not win a majority of popular votes to become president, just a majority in the Electoral College. In a presidential election, voters cast ballots for 538 electors, not directly for president and vice president. The electors, pledged to particular candidates and distributed according to each state's number of House and Senate members, meet in December to complete the process. Large states get more electoral votes because House seats are based on population. Most states use a winner-take-all system, but Nebraska and Maine allocate one elector to the winner of each congressional district and two electors for the winner of the state overall.

Electors are expected to cast their ballots as decided by their state's voters, but on rare occasions "faithless" electors choose another candidate. A tie in the Electoral College throws the presidential election into the House, and the Senate chooses the vice president.

Q: Why was there a recount in Florida?

A: The recount was mandated by Florida law because the vote was so close, less than half of 1 percentage point separating the two candidates. State laws control most aspects of voting, even in federal elections, so Florida law also would likely govern any potential legal challenges to the outcome.

Q: Just how close is it in Florida?

A: An unofficial tally by The Associated Press of the recount in Florida's 67 counties, obtained by interviewing county election officials, showed the Texas governor with a 327-vote lead over the vice president. Florida officials have yet to announce their recount totals.

Q: When will Florida have a final result?

A: Even after ballots from all Florida counties are recounted, it will take at least until Nov. 17 to tabulate ballots cast by Floridians overseas and postmarked by Election Day. In addition, the Gore campaign has asked for recounts by hand in four counties. Volusia County agreed to conduct a hand-count beginning Saturday, as did Palm Beach County in three precincts.

Q: What is the problem in Palm Beach County?

A: The Gore campaign and some voters in the county have complained that a punch-card style ballot was confusing, leading to votes to be disqualified or given to the wrong candidate. Officials in the heavily Democratic county have said 19,120 ballots in the presidential race were thrown out before they were counted because more than one candidate was picked. Only 3,783 voters made that mistake on the U.S. Senate portion of the ballot. Some voters also are concerned they may have voted by mistake for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, who got more than 3,000 votes in the county.

Q: What legal action has been taken?

A: Eight lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts to challenge the Florida results, including six in Palm Beach County and two in Tallahassee. Democratic Party-backed lawsuits won't be filed until next week, party officials said. Also, a Palm Beach County circuit judge has issued a preliminary injunction barring the canvassing commission in that county from certifying the final recount results until a hearing is held on Tuesday.

Q: Could there be a revote in Florida?

A: Court-ordered elections are extraordinarily rare nationwide, but a Florida judge did order a revote two years ago in the disputed Miami mayor's race, citing "fraudulent, intentional and criminal conduct" involving absentee votes. Ultimately, the election was overturned, but not on a revote -- an appeals court found enough evidence to reverse the election outright. In 1974, a Florida trial court also ordered a new election for several losing candidates who challenged the layout of an unusually long ballot. In that case an appeals court overturned the lower court decision.

Q: What does the Gore campaign want?

A: Gore has said the election isn't over. Criticizing the ballots used in Palm Beach County, his campaign has suggested it may call for a new election in the county.

Q: What does the Bush campaign want?

A: The campaign officials have said they believe Bush has won Florida both in the original election and in the recount. Republicans have expressed outrage at the Democratic demands and have suggested that if the situation drags on they might seek recounts in Iowa and Wisconsin, two states where Gore won narrowly. The state GOP in New Mexico is considering legal action in the vote count there where Gore had another narrow lead with 99 percent of precincts counted.

Q: What's the deadline for picking a new president?

A: Bill Clinton is president until January 20 when the new president is to be sworn in. The presidential electors meet on Dec. 18, usually in their state capitals, to vote for president and vice president. Then in January, the president of the Senate -- Vice President Gore -- announces the winner of the presidential election to a joint congressional session.

Q: What if the situation in Florida isn't settled by Dec. 18?

A: The president can be chosen without every state's electoral votes being counted because the Constitution only requires a majority of the electors. If Florida's votes are left in limbo or removed for some legal reason, the remaining electors would pick the president. With Bush's current 246 electoral votes and Gore's 255, Gore would become president. This situation would add importance to disputed results in other states: Oregon and New Mexico still remain too close to call and Republican officials may ask for recounts in Iowa and Wisconsin.

Q: What happens if some combination of shifting electoral votes results in a tie?

A: The presidential race would go to the House, where each state would have one vote and, at least in theory, there could be another deadlock. The Senate would select the new vice president. And the Senate, where each member would have one vote, also theoretically could end up tied. If no new president or vice president had been selected by Inauguration Day, the Presidential Succession Act would kick in, with the speaker of the House -- currently Republican Dennis Hastert -- in line to serve as acting president, followed by the president pro tempore of the new Senate -- who could be Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who turns 98 in December.

Q: Has there ever been an election like this?

A: In 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon by 0.2 percent of the vote, but the Electoral College outcome was clear. Only three times before has a presidential candidate lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College, the last time in 1888 when Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland.

Not since 1876 has a presidential election been so contested after the votes were cast. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won that only after a congressional electoral commission awarded him the White House by one electoral vote. All that was settled only two days before Inauguration Day, which at that time was in March.