The primary drew 57,000 voters, a small slice of the overall electorate.

In New York City, Latino voters make up 18 percent of the overall electorate.

Mr. Bond added that Mr. Giuliani's strong defense of the police in this case "could bleed into the overall electorate and become a modest negative instead of a huge positive."

Since 1992, New York voter registration has swelled by about 2.9 million, to 11 million from 8 million, but Democrats, Republicans and Conservatives failed to increase their share of the overall electorate.

December 23 - In the Slovenian independence referendum, 88.5% of the overall electorate (94.8% of votes), with the turnout of 93.3%, supported independence of the country.

Mr. Edwards also fared better among self-described independent voters, who, if not quite the typical swing voters of a general election, perhaps came closest on Tuesday to reflecting moods among the overall electorate.

Symbols can be very important when the overall electorate is illiterate.

The IRNA reported that a poll conducted 48 hours before the election indicated that Mr. Khatami would capture 84 percent of the first-time voters, compared to 73.8 percent of the overall electorate.

No polls with a broad enough sample to isolate black voters have been taken since the Democratic convention, but poll takers say it is certain that the surge of support in the overall electorate was reflected among blacks.

In an echo of the dilemma facing Republicans in San Diego, polls show that many of the aggressively conservative party members here are not representative of the party at large - let alone the overall electorate.