"The application for stay presented to Justice [David H.] Souter and by him referred to the Court is denied," the order said.

Forrester's campaign conceded that the court's action, coupled with a decision by a U.S. District Court judge in Trenton to dismiss a separate challenge to the ballot switch, means that it has failed in its legal efforts to stop a run by Lautenberg, who, according to polls, has erased Forrester's lead over Torricelli.

The Republican's campaign also is not hopeful of any relief from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, whom New Jersey's GOP members of Congress asked last week to intervene under the federal Voting Rights Act.

"We have to assume this election is going to go forward with Frank Lautenberg on the ballot," said Alex Vogel, general counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). New absentee ballots bearing Lautenberg's name were printed over the weekend and were to be mailed out last night or early today.

Lautenberg said the Supreme Court had "assured New Jersey voters a fair election that offers a real choice between competing candidates and differing ideas."

Forrester issued a statement calling the high court's action an "unfortunate" triumph for "a few establishment elite Party Bosses who will do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to keep their grip on to power."

Lautenberg said he wants to negotiate a schedule of debates with Forrester, who charged that Lautenberg was reneging on an agreement to have 21 debates in the 29 days until the election.

The independent Quinnipiac Poll released yesterday found Lautenberg leading 49 percent to 45 percent among likely voters, essentially flipping the 48 percent to 44 percent lead Forrester had over Torricelli three weeks ago. Lautenberg's lead is within the poll's margin of error, putting the two men in a statistical dead heat.

Although 54 percent of those polled called the ballot switch unfair, only 30 percent said they could not vote Democratic for that reason. The poll, taken Wednesday through Sunday, found both Republicans and Democrats strongly committed to their respective parties' candidates, while independents, who make up the majority of the state's voters, are split almost evenly. The poll found that Forrester is better known than before, but his negative ratings have gone up and his support has dropped among independents.

"New Jersey voters don't like the way Senator Lautenberg got on the ballot, but they are glad to see tarnished Senator Robert Torricelli gone," said pollster Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Though the Supreme Court's terse statement, unaccompanied by any comment or published dissent, left the precise nature of the justices' thinking unexpressed, it clearly showed that the court had no appetite in this case for a return to the political world they forged into during the 2000 presidential election. The court's decision to halt the Florida recount, effectively ending the election in favor of George W. Bush, set off sharp internal divisions at the court and harsh criticism of the justices from legal scholars.

It would have taken a five-vote majority of the nine-member court to grant Forrester's application. Under Supreme Court precedent, the justices would have granted a stay if they believed Forrester would suffer "irreparable harm" without one, and that there was a "fair prospect" that he could have persuaded them later to overturn the New Jersey court's ruling on the merits.

But a majority of justices apparently were not swayed by the legal arguments in Forrester's application papers, which contended that the New Jersey court unconstitutionally rewrote a state law banning ballot changes within 51 days of an election, violated a federal law on absentee voting and denied due process to absentee voters who had already received their ballots. Forrester's effort to liken the potential disruption in an election that could make or break the Democrats' one-vote majority in the Senate to the impending power vacuum at the top of the national government that the court averted in 2000 also did not move the justices to take action.

"The court would have been chastised no matter what it did," said Douglas W. Kmiec, dean of the Catholic University's Columbus School of Law. "If it took the case, it would have been perceived as an instrument of partisan interests . . . . Now, in not taking it, the court can be accused of disregarding its own legal principles and leaving us in total wonderment as to what they were trying to say in Bush v. Gore."

Also yesterday, the NRSC asked the Federal Election Commission to bar Torricelli's campaign from contributing its remaining funds -- reported at more than $5 million -- to Democratic Party organizations for use as "soft money" to support Lautenberg's campaign. The committee invoked FEC regulations stating that a person who no longer is a candidate in a general election must refund contributions made to his election campaign to the donors. It asked the FEC to act immediately "to prevent a serious and irreparable violation of law." National and state Democratic officials have insisted that such a transfer is legal, and they were attempting to negotiate it.

Russakoff reported from New Jersey.

Democrat Frank R. Lautenberg, left, said the Supreme Court's move "assured New Jersey voters of a fair election" while GOP candidate Douglas Forrester, right, blasted the "unfortunate triumph" for "a few . . . party bosses."