President George W. Bush is campaigning hard and it matters, said Jones, "particularly in an election with issues but no direction, because in a low turnout this can make a difference."

Control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance in Tuesday's crucial elections after the deaths of two Democratic senators in as many years threaten the opposition's tenuous majority.

In the central state of Missouri, Senator Jean Carnahan is defending against Republican challenger Jim Talent.

Carnahan stepped in after her husband, Mel Carnahan, died in a plane crash three weeks before the November 2000 senatorial elections.

Election law prevented the name of the late Carnahan from being removed from the ballot at that late date, and voters elected him posthumously, knowing they were effectively voting for his widow, Jean, who had been hand-picked by the state Democratic Party to replace him.

As the latest polls showed Talent edging ahead of Carnahan in Missouri, the race is still too close to call.

Even if Talent wins the election, the results must be certified by Missouri Governor Bob Holden, a Democrat, and not legally obliged to certify the results before the end of December.

Two years later -- on October 25 -- and a few states away, a plane crash also took the life of Senator Paul Wellstone.

The Democrat was in a neck-and-neck battle for his seat with Republican challenger Norm Coleman.

To replace Wellstone, his party turned to former vice president and three-term senator from the state Walter Mondale, in an attempt to preserve their one-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate.

The party cannot afford to lose even one vote, since in the event of a 50-50 tie the Senate president, Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, would cast the tie-breaking vote.

While the Senate's power balance for the next two years is the ultimate political prize, both parties worry about the immediate implications of the upcoming elections on the final month of the congressional session which ends in December.

At stake is how a whole shelf of bills are voted on, including an already delayed federal budget for fiscal 2003.

The Republicans must therefore contemplate finishing out the term with a Democrat-controlled Senate, according to Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia.

All bills on the congressional shelf, including the budget, would be decided upon by a Congress where the opposition is in control in the Senate, Sabato said.

A delay may also come from Minnesota where Mondale, marginally leading in the polls, is tipped to win.

Minnesota Governor Jesse Venture, an independent and one-time professional wrestler, under Minnesota law is due to announce the winner sometime between November 15 and 22, to finish out Wellstone's term.

If Coleman wins, the Republicans stand a chance of taking the Senate from the Democrats as early as mid-November.

It has been more than 30 years since a Democrat won an open U.S. Senate seat in Texas -- and President Bush will try to keep it that way when he comes home Monday for one last political rally.

Even though polls give the advantage to Bush's hand-picked Republican candidate, John Cornyn, a defeat for the party would be disastrous: besides dashing Republican hopes to retake a narrowly divided Senate, it would be a major humiliation setback on Bush's home turf.

"The whole nation is watching," said Senator Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican and movie actor who campaigned in Texas last week for Cornyn.

"It's going to be looked at as how much support George W. Bush has.

"The Democrats would like to embarrass him in his home state, and they're putting a lot of effort into the race."

Democratic candidate Ron Kirk, the charismatic former mayor of Dallas, has made the race competitive, and national Democrats have poured some five million dollars into his campaign in the final weeks.

Surveys have jumped around considerably, with one poll last week by KXAS-TV showing Kirk and Cornyn in a dead heat and the Scripps Howard Texas Poll giving Cornyn a 10-point lead.

Multimillionaire businessman Tony Sanchez, the Democrat running for Bush's old job as Texas governor, is pumping millions of his own money into the election.

While polls have shown Sanchez is likely to lose to current Republican Governor Rick Perry running for re-election, Democrats believe he could drive up the number of minority voters going to the polls and help other Democratic candidates, including Kirk.

Though the strong tend in Texas over recent years has been Republican, the Democrats racially diverse "dream team" could tap into the state's growing black, Hispanic and Asian population and reverse years of GOP dominance.

Republicans now control every single statewide office in Texas.

Already, almost twice as many people have chosen to take advantage of the early voting system compared to the early vote four years ago, with heavy voting in predominately Hispanic -- and heavily Democratic -- precincts in south Texas.

"We're going to have a turnout in Texas that is unprecedented in our history," former Texas Governor Ann Richards, a Democrat Bush defeated in 1994, told a recent student rally in Austin.

"And one of the reasons is that we finally have a ticket that actually looks like the people of Texas -- all of the people of Texas."

If Kirk pulls off an upset victory, even Republicans admit Bush would have a hard time explaining it away.

Not since 1970 -- when Bush's father lost to Democrat Lloyd Bentsen -- have the Democrats won an open U.S. Senate seat here.

The latest vacancy opened up when Republican Senator Phil Gramm announced he was retiring.

Kirk ironically would be filling the Senate seat once held by another Texas president -- Lyndon Baines Johnson -- and he would be the first black elected to the U.S. Senate from the south, propelling him to instant national stardom.

Bush fights for Republican senate hopeful in the heart of Texas

Bush, who is crisscrossing the nation this weekend drumming up support for Republicans in tight races, is leaving nothing to chance.

For the third and final time, he'll appear in Texas with Cornyn late Monday, November 4.

Early Tuesday, November 5, Bush will cast his ballot at a polling station outside his ranch in tiny Crawford, north of Austin.

Kirk has portrayed himself as a moderate, pro-business candidate who brought the two parties together during a period of racial harmony in strife-torn Dallas, the city where former President John Kennedy was assassinated.

Cornyn, meanwhile, portrays Kirk as a partisan who will wreck the favorite Texas son's agenda in Congress.

Kirk, who warns Cornyn will be nothing but "lapdog" for Bush, said he'll show the same independent streak Texans like Johnson once showed in the Senate.

"You've got to wonder who is going to speak for (Cornyn) if he's in Washington," Kirk said.

"You don't have to wonder whose going to speak for me."

Out of 202 million Americans of voting age (older than 18), 129.5 million are registered to vote in Tuesday's mid-term congressional elections, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau in the year 2000.

The U.S. population, according to latest figures, stands at 287.5 million, or about 4.6 percent of the world's population.

Out of the 129.5 million registered to vote, 103.5 million (80 percent) are white, 15.5 million (11.9 percent) are black, 7.5 million (5.7 percent) are Hispanic and 2.5 million (1.9 percent) are Asian, the bureau said.