McCain might receive more votes overall, but Bush will probably win all of the state's 162 delegates. Whatever independent and Democratic support McCain receives, only Republican voters' ballots will count in the race for the GOP's delegates.

"Bush is going to win big-time for the delegates," said Henry E. Brady, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

But if McCain wins California's popular vote or "beauty contest," the New England states and New York, his campaign would still be alive, Brady said.

"It'd be hard to say he's out of the race," he said.

In both New York and Connecticut, the two Republican contenders are neck-and-neck, according to Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac College Polling Institute in New York.

In a poll he released yesterday, Bush held a nine percentage point lead, though McCain held a seven percent advantage lead over the Texas governor March 1.

Carroll said the late Feb. speech McCain gave in Virginia criticizing Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell appears to have hurt him, even though it was designed to attract voters in California and New York.

"That speech appears to have [had] a boomerang effect, which is peculiar, but hey--it's a peculiar year," Carroll said, adding that California's primary system, approved in 1996, is "nutty".