ES MOINES - With front-runners Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore holding large leads in the polls for today's caucuses, their opponents in the presidential campaign yesterday began looking ahead to a much different type of race in next week's New Hampshire primary and beyond.
Former senator Bill Bradley, who is trailing Gore by a 2-to-1 ratio in the Iowa polls, yesterday put aside his talk of a ''surprise'' showing and all but conceded defeat to what he called Iowa's ''entrenched power.'' He vowed to stay in the race for weeks, at least until the March 7 round of primaries, and said he hoped to take his fight to the Democratic convention this summer.
Even as Bradley prepared for the prospect of defeat, he received bad news from New Hampshire, where a CNN poll showed Gore leading Bradley by 52 percent to 43 percent. Bradley had been ahead in several polls recently.
''We've come a long way from beginning a campaign where I wasn't known by anybody in Iowa,'' Bradley said on CBS-TV's ''Face The Nation.'' ''This is the first step of several steps in the journey.'' Later, his spokeswoman, Anita Dunn, said bluntly, ''We don't have any doubt that the vice president is going to win this caucus.'' But she said Bradley would do well in parts of the state.
On the Republican side, Bush tried to make amends for skipping an antiabortion rally here Saturday night that was attended by three of his opponents, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes. All three have said that Bush is waffling because he will not commit to an antiabortion litmus test on judges or a vice presidential candidate.
Keyes, generally regarded as the best orator in the race, emerged in the final days of campaigning as a potentially significant factor. While he garnered only 8 percent in the latest Des Moines Register poll, even a small gain in support could give him outright possession of third place and hurt the standings of his closest competitors. The poll showed Bush with 43 percent, Forbes with 20 percent, Keyes and Senator John McCain with 8 percent, Bauer with 6 percent and Senator Orrin Hatch with 1 percent.
Keyes, addressing a crowd of 500 people at an old dance hall in West Des Moines last night, continued what he called a moral crusade, saying that the failure to ban abortion ''could result in the destruction of our republic, the corruption of our hearts and the corruption of our discipline.''
While Bush battled his opponents over abortion in Iowa, he faced a second and possibly more difficult fight on a second front, the first primary state of New Hampshire. While Bush has a 2-to-1 margin in the Iowa polls, the CNN survey said that McCain, who is not campaigning in Iowa, leads Bush in New Hampshire 42 percent to 33 percent.
McCain spent yesterday in New Hampshire, where he expects to hold his 100th town meeting in the state today. McCain, asked whether he would drop out if he does poorly in the early states, including the Feb. 1 vote in New Hampshire and the Feb. 19 contest in South Carolina, said he would remain in the race at least until a major round of primaries on March 7.
''I see no scenario where we don't go to March 7,'' McCain said, referring to the day when New York and California hold their primaries.
McCain visited Salem High School, where one voter stood up and seemed to refer to President Clinton's sexual relationship with a former White House intern. ''I have a request. ... Don't lie,'' the voter said. ''We don't expect you to be celibate but we do expect you to be faithful.''
McCain blushed and said that he would never lie as president of the United States.
Today in Iowa, after months, and for some candidates, years of campaigning, some 100,000 Democrats and 100,000 Republicans are expected to attend the caucuses in high schools, church basements, and private homes. The caucuses have a checkered history. Jimmy Carter used the caucuses as a first step toward winning the White House in 1976. But other winners here have had less success. Bush's father, George Bush, won here in 1980 but was defeated in New Hampshire by Ronald Reagan, who eventually picked Bush as his running mate.
The last days of the Republican campaign here have been taken over by a debate over abortion and how intensely the various candidates oppose it. With Bush's rivals pressuring him to pledge to pick a ''prolife'' running mate as well as Supreme Court justices committed to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirming abortion rights, the Texas governor has been thrown off stride.
On Saturday night, Bush skipped an antiabortion rally. But yesterday, he attended a service at the same site, a Des Moines Assembly of God church.
Noting Bush's absence on Saturday night, Bauer warned that the leading Republican candidate imperiled his campaign if he ignored the religious right. ''Governor,'' he shouted, ''if you are not going to stand with them, they are not going to stand with you.''
Though Bush insisted yesterday that he was not being pushed to the right, his intensified efforts to appeal to religious conservatives raised the memory of his father's campaign in 1992, when President Bush sought to appease the deeply conservative forces in his party and wound up projecting, in the minds of some, an image of intolerance that may have cost him the general election.
Forbes, meanwhile, faced questions during an appearance on NBC-TV's ''Meet The Press'' about his abortion stance. Tim Russert, the program's moderator, pointed out that the antiabortion crusader Phyllis Schlafly had faulted Forbes's commitment on the issue four years ago.
Forbes said his position had been misunderstood. Schlafly agreed to campaign with him in Iowa this month, he said, after becoming convinced that his opposition to abortion had been consistent.
Separately, Forbes accused the Bush campaign of engineering phone calls to voters that attacked his positions.
Forbes aides said the calls were made this week by the Republican Leadership Council, a moderate group based in Washington. But Forbes portrayed the group yesterday as an arm of the Bush campaign, saying the two share many of the same officials and financial backers. He also noted the RLC has run advertisements defending Bush against Forbes's criticisms.
According to the Forbes campaign, voters received calls asking whom they are supporting in the caucus. Those who said they are Forbes supporters soon received another phone call from the RLC providing negative information about Forbes.
''They really do a job on me,'' Forbes said.
Other calls, said Forbes campaign manager Bill Dal Col, told voters that Forbes was running a negative campaign, and patched them through to Forbes's headquarters with an encouragement to complain. Dal Col said the campaign would file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.
RLC officials and the Bush campaign could not be reached last night for comment.
Forbes, like many of the challengers, looked ahead to New Hampshire, noting that his campaign manager expected the race there to be a Forbes-McCain contest.
Gore campaigned confidently, but he voiced concern that supporters won't venture out into the bitter cold Iowa weather to vote.
''Don't believe the polls,'' Gore said, referring to a Des Moines Register survey that shows him beating Bradley by 56 percent to 28 percent. ''Don't let anything foster the slightest bit of complacency or overconfidence, because the only decision that matters is the one that will come out of the caucus itself, the one in your precinct.''
In his most pointed remarks of the day, Gore told an audience at a Davenport high school that Bradley has treated education reform as an ''afterthought.''
Bradley, while digesting the bad news from the polls, was buoyed by Sunday's endorsement by the Des Moines Register, which lauded his ''compelling'' vision. The former New Jersey senator promptly began airing a last-minute television commercial touting the endorsement of the state's largest newspaper.
Bradley vowed to remain in the race. ''I hope we are going to have major wins down the road and we'll be able to move on to the convention,'' he said. ''No question about that.''
The following Globe reporters, traveling with candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, contributed to this report: Tina Cassidy, Anne Kornblut, Ann Scales, Bob Hohler, Michael Crowley and Susan Milligan.
