But this spring, she often encounters the presidential campaign.

Most of her friends have taken sides, are eager to voice their opinions and find it hard to understand why she doesn't share their views.

The election is turning what used to be a relaxing respite for Diamond into a wearying series of political confrontations.

Diamond is a member of a small group of Americans: She's a likely voter who hasn't decided whether to vote for President Bush, the Republican, or Sen. John Kerry, the Democrat.

She's the type of voter most coveted by the campaigns -- the truly undecided in a state that could go either way in November.

Six months before Election Day, the vast majority of voters are lining up behind the two major candidates unusually early.

Partisans are divided almost evenly, effectively leaving the decisive judgments to as few as 2 million to 3 million likely voters such as Diamond in 17 battleground states.

Once they make up their minds, they could decide the election.

"We have never seen a presidential race so polarized so early," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who's conducted the bipartisan Battleground poll with Republican Ed Goeas for 13 years.

"With Democrats and Republicans already so highly consolidated behind their parties' candidates, the number of voters who are truly undecided is minuscule."

One key reason is that voters have tuned into politics earlier than usual.

With the country at war and recovering from recession, the stakes are large and the choice between Bush and Kerry unusually distinct.

Nearly three times as many Americans are paying attention to the campaign than were four years ago at this stage, according to a recent survey by the Vanishing Voter Project at Harvard University.

"Unlike 2000, when some attempted to argue there wasn't that much difference between the parties, there is a boatload of difference this time, and both candidates have made that clear from the outset," Republican strategist Frank Luntz said.

One prominent pollster, Andy Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, thinks that as many as 20 million voters remain undecided.

But most polls show that as many as 96 percent of likely voters already are solidly behind candidates, or leaning that way.

That leaves only about 4 percent undecided and sought after by the two major campaigns, particularly in the 17 states that are thought to be close enough to go either way.

The Bush and Kerry campaigns are advertising only in those states, for example, and the candidates visit them again and again.

"If you're an undecided in Ohio, they'll come cut your grass and wash your dishes," Luntz said.

That's if the campaigns can find them. The undecideds are an elusive group. Lake thinks they include independents, moderates, Latino men and nonwhite Roman Catholics more than other groups.

Luntz said they were mostly in their 30s, women, working class and middle class, and moderately religious, attending services occasionally.

"They're a very tough group to figure out," said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

"They're late deciders, and it's very possible events that happen late in the campaign will have a great impact on them."

Indeed, one common theme among undecided voters is that the current barrage about politics is having little impact on them, whether it comes from friends and family, the news media or television ads.

"I am surrounded by people who are passionate on one side or the other," said Diamond, a 51-year-old fund raiser for an AIDS group. She complains that neither major party adequately reflects her views.

"People are bludgeoning me with their politics. It's very intense. I've never seen it like this. People are judgmental and reactive."

Unswayed by personal arguments, she also has been unwilling to sort through the charges and countercharges of the Bush and Kerry campaigns.

"There's information flying from both sides, and I don't know what to believe," she said. "I don't spend time reading every publication and doing a lot of research. It's all noise to me."

In Clinton Township, Mich., north of Detroit, Stella Stawor ignores the omnipresent TV ads, and didn't watch news coverage this week when President Bush campaigned in Michigan.

She said she would vote, but that she didn't like Bush because he led the country into war in Iraq and didn't like Kerry because he didn't say what he would do differently from Bush.

"I don't think they're saying enough of what they're going to do. They're just insulting and fighting each other," said Stawor, an 86-year-old retired auto worker who voted for Bush in 2000.

In Rocky River, Ohio, west of Cleveland, publishing company executive John DiPaola, 44, said he was weighing such issues as which candidate would do a better job of helping manufacturing jobs without adopting protectionist trade policies and which would better secure Iraq.

DiPaola, who voted for Al Gore in 2000, said he was intrigued by Kerry's new positive, biographical TV ads this week.

But he said he, too, had tuned out the negative ads, in which the candidates have been attacking one another.

He wants to see more about the candidates and their plans, then see how they do face to face.

"I'm going to wait and see how the debates play out," he said. "That will be a telling factor."