Two debates--one in the March snows of New Hampshire and the other barely a week ago in industrial Cleveland--helped boost Reagan above the incumbent.

The first will be remembered for Reagan's assertion that "I paid for this microphone," a declaration observers said helped him to an overwhelming victory in the Granite State primary and that squelched the momentum of the GOP challenger and now vice president-elect George Bush.

In the second debate, under heavy attack on his record from Carter, Reagan turned to the president and said, "There you go again," a line repeated again and again in Reagan commercials during the closing week of the battle.

Anderson's independent candidacy may have cost Carter victory in a single state--Connecticut--and narrowed his margin in Massachusetts, where strong student turnouts in Amherst and Cambridge gave the independent at least 16 per cent of the vote.

But the depth of the nation's conservativism was proved by the impressive victories of other Republican senatorial and congressional candidates and by the size of the Republican margin in states that normally vote Democratic.

Carter's showing was slightly better than that of the Democratic candidate George McGovern, who won only 17 electoral votes in 1972. The president was close to the electoral vote total of Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Among third party candidates, Libertarian Ed Clark and Citizens Party standard-bearer Barry Commoner both showed up in the vote totals of many states.

Carter, who had trailed badly in midsummer, fought Reagan to a near-draw in the polls before last week's debate.

That tilt gave Reagan a slight "bump" in the polls, an edge that apparently grew over the weekend as the president failed in his attempts to bring the American hostages in Iran home before the election