Mr. Burns' showing in a district drawn for a Democrat is surprising, particularly since many say it was drawn for Mr. Walker, the son of state Sen. Charles Walker Sr., who had a hand in creating the 12th District map.

The younger Mr. Walker was expected to win easily in the district, where 60 percent of the voters are Democrats, but things haven't turned out as planned.

Polls show a growing momentum for Mr. Burns and the possibility he might win.

According to a poll commissioned last week by The Augusta Chronicle and WRDW-TV Channel 12, Mr. Burns was leading with 36.5 percent to Mr. Walker's 24.9 percent. Libertarian candidate Marc Smith had 3.1 percent. Undecided voters make up the remaining 35.5 percent.

Poll results show the race is breaking along racial lines, with Mr. Burns winning 56 percent of the white vote and Mr. Walker winning 46.5 percent of the black vote. Among the white voters polled, 29.6 percent were undecided, compared with 44.2 percent of black voters.

"Given the fact that the undecideds are evenly broken out, if the trend were to continue, Burns would likely defeat Walker," said Matt Towery, the chairman of Insider Advantage and a syndicated political columnist.

Charles Bullock, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs, said the poll is in line with a recent poll by The Tarrance Group that showed Mr. Burns was ahead of Mr. Walker by 15 percentage points.

The polls show Mr. Walker with only about half the share of the white vote he would probably need to win, Dr. Bullock said.

"He would need to pick up much more of the white vote to be able to put together a successful biracial coalition," Dr. Bullock said.

But he said he expects that most of the undecided black voters would eventually vote for Mr. Walker.

Dr. Bullock, who predicted after Mr. Walker's primary victory that he would win in a walk, has changed his tune.

"I'm beginning to think that Burns is going to win, something I would not have believed was possible," he said.

Mr. Burns said the only poll he was interested in is the one Tuesday.

"We're going to focus on that," he said. "It's the only thing that counts. We're encouraged. We certainly are glad we've got an opportunity. We've got to work hard. We're going to work hard between now and next week all the way through 7 o'clock on Tuesday the fifth."

Mr. Walker refused to discuss the poll, but his spokesman John Kirincich said he would be "very suspicious" of any poll that would show more than a third of voters undecided less than a week before the election.

GEORGIA SOUTHERN University political science professor G. Lane Van Tassell said he thinks that, when the election is over, state and national Democratic Party members are going to sit down and scratch their heads and wonder "what in the world they did wrong."

"This was the race where the demographics were such that they could have won and should have won," he said. "I don't think they're going to."

It all started in the primary, he added, with Democrats confused about which of the seven candidates to line up behind.

"And now they got their candidate in Walker, he just proved to be an almost inept campaigner," he said. "I think a lot of Democrats are going to be very unhappy with the outcome. It's still possible that this will turn out differently."

The key here will be the turnout, he said - not necessarily the total turnout, but the turnout of the candidates' individual bases.

"I think Burns has energized his base," he said. "I think it's going to turn out. I think there are a lot of potential Walker supporters who will sit this one out. I think they've been very unhappy with the ability to know where their candidate is and what he stands for."

In addition, "some very nasty campaigning" has to be factored in, Dr. Van Tassell said.

"The campaigning for this congressional district without an incumbent has been some of the nastiest I've ever seen in my life," he said. "And I think most of that responsibility comes from the Burns campaign. I think they have bent over backward to run campaign ads that I think a few months from now they're going to be ashamed of."

The poll and analysis were conducted by Insider Advantage, an online media and government services company that has completed polls and analysis for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN, Fox News and the Washington Times.

INSIDER ADVANTAGE has worked this election season with The Marketing Workshop to accurately poll an assortment of races in the Southeast, including the upset losses of Georgia Congressman Bob Barr and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Predictions are based on a sample group of 670, and the poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. Final numbers have been weighted to reflect actual voting-age population groups and their past turnout levels.

The final numbers are a combination of decided and leaning voters.

The analysts said they do not believe a libel and slander lawsuit Mr. Walker filed last week in Richmond County Superior Court against Mr. Burns over his radio ads will have much effect on the race.

"Research has shown that with regard to negative campaign advertising, people will forget the source of it, they'll simply remember the substance of it," Dr. Bullock said. "They may remember that, but they're not going to remember it came from the Burns campaign. They may think they saw a news story."

The weather could be the deciding factor, Mr. Towery said.

"If it rains, the congressional race could become tighter because - contrary to what everybody says - they always like to think about Georgia in the 1920s. And we're not in the 1920s anymore.

"Usually when it rains, Republicans and white candidates suffer, and African-American and Democratic candidates do better. A lower turnout always inures to the benefit of a Democrat/African-American candidate. That is historically supported by virtually every election in the 1980s and 1990s in Georgia."

TUNE IN

At 6 p.m. today, WRDW-TV Channel 12 looks at how negative campaign ads from Georgia's 12th Congressional District have affected voters.

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or sylviaco@augustachronicle.com.

--From the Sunday, November 3, 2002 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle