OVER, N.H. - They call it phone bank in a box.
It is a blue plastic toolbox with cell phones and chargers on the inside, and Bill Bradley bumper stickers on the outside. On a recent night, it is sitting on Gary Gilmore's kitchen table, while 11 young volunteers chatter away throughout his 150-year-old farmhouse, trying to convince voters of the righteousness of their candidate and the importance of their cause.
With only days to go until the New Hampshire primary, it all comes down to field work. That's the unglamorous job of calling voters, knocking on doors, dropping off campaign literature, and getting people to the polls, even in the bitter cold and snow. It could mean the difference between winning and losing, between the Oval Office and a temporary teaching job at Harvard.
''It could make a 2 to 5 percent swing in the final total,'' said Steve Duprey, the New Hampshire Republican chairman, surveying polls showing races too close to call in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.
Because New Hampshire is a small state, it's possible for a candidate to win or lose by a small number of votes. In 1976, Gerald Ford beat Ronald Reagan by 1,587 votes. In 1996, Patrick J. Buchanan beat Bob Dole by 2,136 votes. Secretary of State William Gardner expects about 300,000 to 400,000 people to cast ballots on Tuesday.
That's why Chris Goodnow, the Rockingham County chairman for John McCain, stood on a platform at Salem High School the other day and urged people to take a lawn sign from the back of the cafeteria and stick it in their front yards.
It is also why he asked the crowd of about 400 if they would each take 20 pieces of campaign literature and hand it out to their neighbors.
''We're going to be outspent,'' Goodnow told the people gathered to question the Arizona senator. But that certainty on the airwaves does not mean that McCain supporters will be outworked on the ground, he said.
While candidates are judged on the content and delivery of their message, their campaigns are scrutinized for an ability to identify and reach voters.
Some campaigns - those of Al Gore, George W. Bush, and Steve Forbes - are using paid phone banks to reach as many voters as possible. Others, such as Bradley's and McCain's, are strictly using volunteers.
''It's neighbor talking to neighbor,'' said Mike Dennehy, McCain's New England campaign director. ''It's not professional phone banks in Alabama talking to residents in Plymouth, N.H. That's the difference. That's what the Bush campaign doesn't understand.''
The Gore campaign estimates that, using a combination of paid and volunteer phone banks, it reached 303,000 voters by the end of December. Its goal is to identify who is supporting Gore, leaning toward Gore, undecided, or supporting Bradley.
The Bradley campaign, on the other hand, has made about 150,000 calls so far, said Kevin Keefe, the Bradley campaign field director. His volunteers are doing more than identifying voters; they're also trying to persuade, which takes much longer.
At Gilmore's house here on the coast, Vedat Gashi, 21, is sitting on a couch, wearing a powder blue knit hat to stay warm and chatting on the cell phone with an undecided Democratic voter.
''Bill Bradley is the only candidate who's been consistently pro-choice,'' says Gashi, a Connecticut College student from New York. ''I'm going to send you some stuff on that, too.''
Gashi asks the woman if she has watched any of the debates between Bradley and Gore, then offers his assessment of Bradley. ''He's the kind of guy who speaks frankly and speaks from the heart,'' he tells her.
While Keefe knows these phone calls take longer, he boasts that the Bradley team is ahead of Gore when it comes to door knocking.
The Bradley volunteers have engaged in other high-visibility acts as well. There's ''Beep, beep for Bill Bradley,'' where supporters stand on street corners with signs in the early morning hours. There's ''the light brigade,'' where volunteers carry flashlights and canvass from 4 to 8 p.m.
And this week, the Bradley campaign hopes to hit every Dunkin' Donuts in the state with signs that say ''Slam Dunkin' for Bradley.''
''If we can do every Dunkin' Donuts in the state, it's over, we've won, because that's a lot of Dunkin' Donuts,'' said Keefe. ''And if we can get everyone who buys a Dunkin' Donut to vote, that's a landslide.''
