There's still another six months of presidential campaigning to endure, but already financial pundits are pondering the potential tax consequences of the outcome.

Greg Valliere, chief political strategist with Charles Schwab's Washington Research Group, believes that if President Bush is re-elected, he will seek to make the tax cuts enacted last year permanent. The more favorable treatment of capital gains and dividend income will expire at the end of 2008 unless Congress says otherwise.

Bush has a better chance of cementing the 15 percent dividend and 15 percent capital gains tax cuts than holding the line on individual tax rates, Valliere says. That's particularly true for the 35 percent tax bracket, a sitting duck for Democratic charges that Bush's tax cuts benefit the rich, he says.

Democrat John Kerry will try to roll back some of the Bush cuts. The worse the budget deficit is, the better Kerry's chances of accomplishing that, but Valliere still rates the odds of that happening at well below 50 percent.

The crystal ball of Susan Breakefield Fulton, a Bethesda, Md., investment adviser, transmits a different picture.

"If Sen. Kerry is elected president, the tax cuts we've seen in the Bush administration are sure to go by the wayside," Fulton predicts, adding that she would expect capital gains rates to increase to 20 percent or more in a Kerry administration.

Meanwhile, a recent Harris Poll indicates that, for the time being at least, taxes don't appear to be a make-or-break issue in the campaign. The pollster found that while Republicans and Democrats pretty much swallow the party line on tax policy hook, line and sinker, independent voters are equally split between the two candidates on taxes. The online poll was conducted last month on a nationwide sample of 2,415 adults.

Overall, voters prefer Bush's tax policies to Kerry's by a 36 percent to 31 percent margin; 15 percent saw no difference between the two, while 18 percent were undecided.

When separated by party affiliation, Republicans would rather see Bush be their tax man by a 79 percent to 4 percent margin, while Democrats favored Kerry 57 percent to 9 percent. Independents narrowly preferred Bush, 34 to 32 percent.

Democratic propaganda on taxes seems to resonate better than the Republican spin. By a 49 percent to 33 percent margin, voters agreed with the Democrats' contention that Bush's tax cuts are unfair because they benefit a small number of the very rich. They also agreed, 45 percent to 30 percent, that the tax cuts will create a huge budget deficit if they aren't reversed.

When asked whether Kerry and the Democrats want to raise taxes so they can spend the money on unnecessary services, only 37 percent agreed with that assessment while 38 percent disagreed. When asked whether Kerry wants to spend too much on federal programs, they agreed by a 39 percent to 30 percent margin.

Perhaps one reason tax policy doesn't appear to be a swing issue is because bigger issues will have more impact on tax rates than the genetic proclivities of Republicans and Democrats. Robert Fragasso, president of Downtown investment adviser The Fragasso Group, says if the war on terrorism continues to escalate the federal budget deficit, "inevitably we're going to have to see higher taxes" no matter who's in the White House.

The November election also will determine which party controls Congress, which will have a major impact on what the next president will be able to do about taxes and other issues that concern investors, Fragasso says.

While speculating on the outcome of the election may help pass the time at cocktail parties, Fragasso says it should have little or no bearing on investment decisions. A well constructed financial plan built around a diversified portfolio "trumps any short-term movement in tax codes," he says. Investors who have a solid plan shouldn't pervert it based on what may happen in the next few months, he says.

Brian Knapp, a certified financial planner with Hefren-Tillotson, says anxiety over November's election explains a lot of the choppiness in markets recently. Fears that Democrats would raise taxes and make other moves against business have investors upset, he says.

But for now, investors have to live with what they have, including the preferential tax treatment being given to dividends. That's why Knapp is recommending clients move out of bonds and certificates of deposit, which are taxed at higher rates, and into dividend-paying vehicles.

"The only thing we can do is act based upon how the current law stands," Knapp says.

So while you're tuning out the rhetorical nonsense in the campaign ads on which our would-be saviors are spending millions, ignore the urge to recast your portfolio based on the chances of greedy Republicans and tax-and-spend Democrats.

And wake me when it's over.