WASHINGTON – Jeb Bush may be an even greater asset for the president this year than he was in 2000 when it comes to eking out votes in the Sunshine State, worrying Democratic strategists who see the Florida governor as their biggest obstacle in a state that could again play a decisive role in determining who wins the White House.

Governor Bush is hoping to avoid a repeat of that tumultuous election night four years ago, when the networks called the state prematurely for Vice President Gore and he was left in a downtown Austin hotel suite protesting to his downcast brother that all was not lost. Ironically, only a few days before that, George W. Bush had quipped at an Orlando rally that if his little brother failed to deliver Florida, it would be a chilly Thanksgiving festival in the Bush household.

While there were no filial recriminations on election night, there was tension between the brothers, and Jeb Bush remained behind in the Four Seasons hotel as his elder brother swept out with an entourage and headed to the Texas governor’s mansion to plan his strategy.

This time, pollsters are talking about a Siamese twin effect, pointing to Jeb Bush’s runaway popularity in the state and the widespread praise he’s earned for his response to the record spate of hurricanes to wrack Florida this year.

“Since the hurricanes hit, it has been all Jeb, all the time on television and in the newspapers,” said a University of Virginia political scientist, Larry Sabato. “You better believe what an enormous plus he is for the president. There will definitely be a carryover effect for the president, and it will be very difficult for John Kerry to overcome the Jeb Bush factor. Many voters in Florida do not separate the brothers. They may like Jeb more, but there is a Siamese twin aspect to all of this.”

Despite Governor Bush’s popularity in the state, he told ABC’s “This Week” yesterday that he was not planning to run for the presidency in 2008. “I’m not going to run for president in 2008. That’s not my interest,” Mr. Bush said.

All the signs indicate that Florida’s nearly 10 million registered voters are just as polarized as they were in 2000, when President Bush carried the state by a controversial 537 votes after a disputed ballot recount and dramatic judicial intervention. A recent Mason-Dixon Research poll of 625 likely voters gave the president a 4% lead statewide, but two other new polls have found the race much closer and see it as a toss-up.

The Democrats have been banking on an influx of non-Cuban Hispanics since the last election to give them an edge, but the president’s brother showed in 2002 what a potent electoral force he can be when he won the bulk of the Democratic-inclined Puerto Ricans in his gubernatorial re-election campaign.

His popularity among Hispanics has only increased since then. According to pollster Sergio Bendixen, Jeb Bush is the president’s strongest card in Florida and helps the Republican ticket in many different ways.

“I see his contribution everywhere with Hispanics,” Mr. Bendixen said. “I conducted a focus group the other day in central Florida and the comments were revealing. People mentioned that they had seen him at their churches; they said he speaks Spanish better than they do and he seems to have broken a barrier for a politician because the participants really spoke of him as a family member. They mention his wife being Mexican.”

Both parties are spending a lot of time and money reaching out to Hispanics. On campaign stops, the president displays his facility with Spanish, referring to the governor as “mi hermanito” – my little brother.

Mr. Bendixen, who polls mainly for Democrats, said the Florida governor helps the GOP presidential ticket even more than the party’s senatorial candidate, Mel Martinez, a former housing and urban development secretary. “He has made life a lot more difficult for us. We have tried to focus on the issues in our campaigning because we lose in the personality fight,” he said.

The director of Mason-Dixon Polling, Brad Coker, concurs. “Jeb Bush is very popular in Florida right now and certainly much more so than he was four years ago,” Mr. Coker said, adding that the GOP has done well in tying the brothers together, especially in the wake of the hurricanes.

After surveying hurricane damage at a citrus grove on September 29, the day before his first debate with Mr. Kerry in Coral Gables, the president emphasized that he asked Congress to provide $12.2 billion in disaster relief for the state.

Scarcely a day has gone by since the hurricanes without another emergency proclamation from the Florida governor’s office waiving regulations due to the storms’ impact, or announcing new aid from the Bush administration.

In the Mason-Dixon survey that gave Mr. Bush a 4% lead over Mr. Kerry, 70% of voters gave Mr. Bush an excellent or good rating for his performance in the storms’ aftermath. His father, President George H.W. Bush, received a 50% “fair or poor” rating from Florida voters after Hurricane Andrew.

Overall, 16% of voters polled said they would be more likely to vote for Mr. Bush because of the hurricanes. “This is not a huge figure but could be very important if the race remains tight in the state and if Florida again proves to be the decisive battleground state,” said Mason-Dixon’s Mr. Coker. Across Florida, 84% of voters rated the governor’s performance as “excellent or good.” That contrasts with the late Florida governor, Lawton Chiles, who got just 28% in those categories after Andrew.

Mr. Kerry and his running mate, Senator Edwards, are still competing aggressively in the state. Mr. Kerry was in Florida over the weekend, urging voters to take advantage of the new early mail voting option, and he is due to appear in West Palm Beach, Tampa, and Orlando today. Mr. Edwards was in Miami on Saturday and met yesterday with voters in Daytona Beach, Gainesville, and Tallahassee.

Kerry advisers argue they can win the state and have sought to fire up the Democratic base by resurrecting the memories of the 2000 election. The Democrats have also launched resourceful voter-turnout and voter-registration initiatives and argue that the Sunshine State is still very much in play.

The bitter memory of the flawed 2000 election is finding resonance among black voters and Jewish voters in Broward and Palm Beach counties, Kerry advisers said. And West Palm Beach’s Democratic mayor, Lois Frankel, said the war in Iraq and the sluggish economy have only stoked activists’ anger.

Democrat strategists also hope that if they lose a small but important percentage of the non-Cuban Hispanic vote to the president, they will make it up with a higher turnout of black voters. Polls currently suggest that many African-American voters in Florida have yet to become ardent in their support of Mr. Kerry. Democrats point out that in 2000, surveys also showed little enthusiasm for Mr. Gore, but the turnout was large and the Democrat got 90% of that demographic’s vote.

In their frustration with the “Jeb Bush factor,” Democrats have recently accused the governor of mixing the hurricane response with election politics. They point to a GOP flyer picturing the governor urging voting by mail, which starts today, “for our Republican team,” noting “many of our citizens are suffering from the devastation of multiple hurricanes.” The flyer ads: “We are working incredibly hard to ease your pain and provide assistance. But even during this difficult time, the world and our nation must move forward.”