No other candidate in the contest can match the sharp-tongued, super-heated, hard-right patriotism of Mr. Dornan, political incorrectness incarnate.

To some observers, the moving struggle of the 23-year-old student trying to come to grips with his ambivalence sets a standard the 45-year-old candidate cannot match.

No other candidate matched that, and Mr. Dole's team managed to reach only 26 percent of his voters.

It would give him a glamour that no other candidate could match; there was something Olympian, almost godlike, about the prospect.

After losing his quarter-final candidates match to Ribli in 1983, Torre became disillusioned with chess and more or less went into semi-retirement.

Now he has the exquisite gall to demand that the two legitimate candidates meet or match it.

Some of Mr. Allawi's rivals, meanwhile, reach thousands every week at Friday Prayer, in a grass-roots network that secular candidates cannot match.

Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik played a candidates match to decide the challenger, which Shirov won in a surprising upset.

She said Mr. Kerry's "rhetoric as a presidential candidate does not match his record as a United States senator."

Although his opponents were given access to television and newspaper coverage, and limits to the freedom of the press had been slightly lifted, no single candidate could match him.