President Hugo Chávez would win if a recall referendum were held, one of the country's top pollsters, Alfredo Keller & Associates, reported.

"When Republicans talk about the Democratic plan as bureaucrats and politicians in Washington making decisions about prescription drugs, that's extraordinarily effective," said Glenn Bolger, a top pollster for House Republicans.

The survey was made public at a forum in which some top pollsters suggested that the health care struggle, while rarely mentioned in the candidates' television advertising, played a powerful subterranean role in the Republican takeover of Congress.

For example, although Stanley Greenberg remains the President's chief pollster, aides said, his work is now supplemented by that of two other top Democratic pollsters, Geoffrey Garin and Mark Mellman.

That is some of the advice in a strategy memorandum by Frank Luntz, a top Republican pollster, that was addressed to the Republican Conference and circulated on Capitol Hill this month.

Tony Fabrezio, a top Republican pollster who worked with Mr. Brown on the Horton advertisement, still grows misty over the moment.

Tom Kiley, one of the state's top pollsters, would gauge Kennedy's progress with voters.

The country's top political pollster, Maurice de Hond, found that Hirsi Ali's own party's voters ranked her behind only the Labor leader Wouter Bos as the worst politician in the country.

John Maxwell, the campaign's top pollster, said: "Our Iowa strategy is to show Forbes as a viable candidate and pierce the veneer of inevitability of Bush.

"They have seen what can happen, and they are very frightened," said Renato Mannheimer, one of Italy's top pollsters.