ADISON, Wis. - Will they or won't they?
In these last days of an increasingly scrappy presidential contest, it has become a central question for all three high-profile candidates: Will the people who say they support Ralph Nader today really pull the lever for him on Tuesday?
That question is being asked with extra urgency in states like Wisconsin, where neither Vice President Al Gore nor Governor George W. Bush of Texas has been able to open up a solid lead, and where Green Party nominee Nader continues to attract enough support from potential Gore voters to give the governor a chance of taking the state.
The latest Zogby International poll showed Gore with a statistically insignificant lead over Bush in Wisconsin, with Nader attracting 7 percent.
Analysts said there won't be much change in Nader's 4 percent to 6 percent share of the national vote by Tuesday; his polling numbers today more or less predict his showing at the ballot box.
''If they have resisted the pull of Gore until now, then yes, they probably will vote for Nader,'' said William Mayer, a political science professor at Northeastern University. Mayer, who has studied presidential races, said third-party candidates' polling numbers in the final days before an election have always held steady.
''Nader will have huge impact no matter what, in Wisconsin and many other states,'' said polling specialist John Zogby. Those states include Oregon, Washington, and Michigan. ''I'm not seeing very many defections,'' Zogby said.
If he's right, it won't be for lack of effort by the two major parties.
In Madison, the Berkeley of the Midwest and fertile ground for Nader, Democrats and Greens are at war. Democrats are trying to convince Nader devotees that a vote for the veteran consumer activist will be a wasted one, helping to elect a candidate who would be disastrous for progressive causes.
Workers in the Nader campaign are urging their supporters to stand firm, that Gore has no inalienable right to their vote, and that they should follow their consciences.
Backing up each camp here are armies of celebrities and a serious ad war, the latter partly fueled by Republicans, who clearly sense an opening.
A visit to Madison on Friday found plenty of Nader supporters who were determined to stick with their man, come hell, high water, or President George W. Bush. But not everyone was immovable.
Caroline Brock felt quite bad about it, but the Democrats had won her over. She works in sustainable agriculture research, and supporting Nader, with his hard line on the evironment, was a natural for her. She had attended his rallies. She even gave his campaign $30.
But last week Brock, 26, cast her absentee ballot for Gore.
''It's too close in Wisconsin,'' she said sadly. ''It's Bush or Gore in reality, as much as my instinct would like to vote for Nader. It was a hard decision.''
She's heard the claims of Nader and his supporters that there is no difference between Gore and Bush, and that a Bush presidency would spur a resurgence of progressivism in America. But she wondered if that was worth it.
''Nader has said [Bush would] be so bad people would rise up in the streets,'' Brock said. ''And that struck me. Do I really want to keep tabs on the government all the time? I'd rather compromise and vote for Gore. He'll be more ethical on the environment.''
For every Brock, however, there is a Christin Engstrom.
Engstrom, a 23-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin, will vote for Nader. Period. And no amount of cajoling by Gore-sympathetic celebrities will sway her.
The Democrats ''keep sending out these messages saying a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush,'' she said. ''They sent Gloria Steinem and Jesse Jackson here to tell me to vote for Gore, and I want to know: Why are they yelling at me when Gore is the one who is the bad candidate?''
Engstrom has been here before. In 1996, she said, Democrats convinced her that Bob Dole could win the presidency without her vote. She wanted to vote for Nader back then, but cast her ballot for President Clinton instead.
''I changed my mind at the last minute, and I have regretted it ever since,'' she said. ''I want to vote for somebody with integrity, not somebody where I have to cringe when I go to the ballot. And Al Gore is too willing to sacrifice the things he says he believes in for votes.''
Engstrom has stood her ground against a barrage of arguments from Democrats. Nader has his celebrity supporters: actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, singers Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper, for example. But Gore also has his: singer Melissa Etheridge and actor Martin Sheen, for example, and they're all beating a path to Engstrom's door.
In addition to Jackson and Steinem and a slew of less famous Gore sympathizers, Wisconsin hosted Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a man of considerable liberal prestige, Friday. He called Nader's attempt to win votes in battleground states ''rather perverse.''
Gore's Madison volunteers have been trying to convince Nader supporters that Nader actually hurts most liberal causes; that he focuses only on corporate greed and the environment, and not on issues that more directly affect the disenfranchised.
''A vote for Ralph Nader is a vote of privilege,'' said Adam Klaus, a University of Wisconsin senior and Gore volunteer. The typical Nader supporter, he said, is white, middle-class, and male.
''It's people who have the luxury of not having to lose their right to choose,'' he said. ''It's a white person who doesn't have to worry about affirmative action going down the tubes, and the heterosexual person who doesn't have to worry about a hate crimes law being passed.''
Nick Berigan, a 50-year-old Nader volunteer, has heard that before.
''I've had a lot of white people tell me why black people aren't supporting Ralph Nader,'' he said, displaying a Nader endorsement by a black newspaper in Milwaukee. ''We keep hearing at the national, state and local level that we shouldn't be doing this `right now.' But if we don't start moving towards a more open politics now, it'll be that much longer before we can address these issues.''
In any case, analysts caution that Nader's supporters aren't necessarily making a choice between their candidate and Gore. About half of them, Mayer and Zogby maintain, wouldn't vote at all if not for Nader.
Zogby said the Democrats' strategy was not working in states like Wisconsin.
''And for that matter, it looks as if to some degree the strategy by Gore has backfired,'' he said. ''Gore is urging Nader voters to not waste their vote. But Nader's support, instead of dissipating, has held steady or even risen in some places.''
