In The Political Machine, a campaign manager locked in a close battle checks "Zagby" (a tongue-in-cheek reference to widely quoted Zogby) surveys to check his candidate's Electoral College standings -- finding, for example, that he must win Ohio without losing Iowa in order to clinch the prize. The manager could afford to send either an "Intimidator" into Ohio to suppress his opponent's turnout, or a "Media Darling" to pump up the ratings in Iowa -- but not both.

Pool organizers range from political junkies to political novices who want to liven up parties or connect with friends. "We're trying to make it comfortable for both sides," says Susan Slack, who's conducting a pool as part of her Election Night party in Duluth, Ga. Other features of her party: Pin the Trunk on the Elephant, an Electoral College quiz and snacks of red-and-blue-colored nachos.

All this reflects how hot the nation's political temperature is running. "It's kind of like a football game where virtually everyone I know went to one of the schools," says Ben Curran, a real estate developer who is taking part in Mr. Keiter's pool. "It's a real rivalry, but unlike a football game, it actually really matters."

OBJECT: BECOME THE next leader of the free world. Method: Collect 270 of 538 electors. Two major players, ages 35 and up.

Generations of Americans have turned presidential politics into parlor games and betting contests. But after the last, popular-vote- defying election -- an act that some think could be repeated this year -- the games have taken on a new focus: the Electoral College itself. A range of new offerings, including videogames, board games and Internet sites where participants choose potential election outcomes, show the new prominence that the institution has assumed in the gaming culture.

Frontrunner, eLECTIONS and The Political Machine are among the new election-simulating videogames that turn players into campaign managers who must constantly factor their candidates' Electoral College vote totals into such decisions as how to allocate resources on travel, speeches and attack ads. All three offer a dazzling array of state-specific polls and electoral-vote calculators to help virtual Karl Roves determine how to get the most electoral bang for their limited campaign bucks.

Even many informal betting pools, a staple of the quadrennial Election Night parties that will convene this evening around the country, are focusing on the Electoral College, rather than on the better-known but politically inconsequential popular vote.

In The Political Machine, a campaign manager locked in a close battle checks "Zagby" (a tongue-in-cheek reference to widely quoted Zogby) surveys to check his candidate's Electoral College standings -- finding, for example, that he must win Ohio without losing Iowa in order to clinch the prize. The manager could afford to send either an "Intimidator" into Ohio to suppress his opponent's turnout, or a "Media Darling" to pump up the ratings in Iowa -- but not both.

For board-game fans, Landslide turns players into presidential contenders who gain and lose states on an Electoral College map as they travel along a square-shaped campaign trail that bears a resemblance to Monopoly. A Landslide player might spend political capital to win a vote-rich state like Texas by one vote, only to see an opponent draw a "Maverick" card inspired by the Washington elector who cast his Electoral College vote for Ronald Reagan in 1976, even though Gerald Ford won the state. The $30 board game is available online and at a few retail locations around Minneapolis, where its inventors live.

"For a lot of people, you have to turn a serious subject into a game to fully involve them. The Electoral College is kind of a puzzl ...a serious puzzle," says Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia who runs his own Electoral College- predicting Web site called Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball.

The primary legal domestic avenue for placing election bets in the U.S. is the Iowa Electronic Markets, which is now closed to new bettors. Among the most popular overseas sites are two Irish betting exchanges called Tradesports.com and Intrade.com, both new since the 2000 election. The two sites handled $30 million worth of wagers in October -- mostly from Americans -- on everything from whether President Bush would win Wisconsin to whether Sen. John Kerry would garner more than 300 electoral votes.

Americans more interested in placing tiny bets for fun are joining informal betting pools with friends, family or co-workers. Like contestants filling out their brackets for the March Madness college basketball tournament or the Oscars, players generally pick the winners in each state and settle on a final Electoral College vote tally for the candidate.

Pool organizers range from political junkies to political novices who want to liven up parties or connect with friends. "We're trying to make it comfortable for both sides," says Susan Slack, who's conducting a pool as part of her Election Night party in Duluth, Ga. Other features of her party: Pin the Trunk on the Elephant, an Electoral College quiz and snacks of red-and-blue-colored nachos.

The stakes range from pool to pool. Allan Keiter, the president of MyRatePlan.com, which provides information for cellphone rate plans, hopes to gather enough contestants to pay the winner $270 -- the magic number of electors needed to win the Electoral College. Meanwhile, the winner of James Erwin's contest in Ames, Iowa, will receive a hodgepodge of buttons, stickers and other campaign collectibles. "We live in Iowa, so they tend to pile up pretty fast," Mr. Erwin says.

Today's gamblers follow a long history of betting on the presidential race. Between 1880 and 1928, election wagering was a huge, legal industry centered in New York and was regularly covered by major newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal. Republican and Democratic party bosses took part, and a record $165 million changed hands in the 1916 election, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson won Ohio and Florida to beat Charles Evans Hughes.

"The newspapers were reluctant to report on the [betting], but there was nothing else to tell them how close the races were," says Koleman Strumpf, an economics professor at the University of North Carolina. After that election, he says, a series of Wall Street scandals and the rise of parimutuel gambling contributed to state laws that pushed election wagering back into the shadows. At the same time, scientific polling eliminated the need for newspapers to rely on bettors' odds.

By comparison, today's gamblers have a surfeit of Web sites and news outlets to help them calculate the odds. Sites like www.electoral- vote.com and www.270towin.com continually update their election maps based on the latest polls, and www.unfutz.blogspot.com has become a go-to site for its compendium of predictions. The U.S. Electoral College Calculator on www.grayraven.com offers two interesting things: a blank map for the reader to fill in with picks, and a historical map from previous U.S. elections that allows the reader to engage in some serious revisionism by changing which candidate won which state.

Media Web sites, meanwhile, are full of Electoral College maps and forecasts for which way the battleground states will go. CNN's Web site even offers a contest called the "Presidential Showdown Game," in which the person who picks the most states correctly wins a flat- screen television.

Teachers are using online resources, too. BrainPOP, a company specializing in educational videos, claims 20% of schoolchildren have seen its videos, including one that explains the Electoral College. Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, is challenging his students to beat his Electoral College predictions. Those who do get a certificate announcing that they "Beat the Prof."

A University of Oklahoma comedy troupe called O.U. Improv is staging a five-hour show tonight on campus. One particularly relevant feature of the performance: A table of audience members will be the Electoral College, who can overrule "the popular vote" -- which is to say, everyone else.

All this reflects how hot the nation's political temperature is running. "It's kind of like a football game where virtually everyone I know went to one of the schools," says Ben Curran, a real estate developer who is taking part in Mr. Keiter's pool. "It's a real rivalry, but unlike a football game, it actually really matters."