The immense ideological division of the state Legislature is very evident this week as lawmakers churn toward adjournment and hurriedly pass hundreds of bills.

About 90 percent of the Capitol's 120 lawmakers are either very liberal Democrats or very conservative Republicans, with only a handful of moderates tolerated by either party. The widening of the Legislature's ideological gap directly results from a two-party deal on legislative redistricting, enacted in 2001, that makes it very difficult for anyone other than lock step ideologues to win seats.

Overwhelmingly, the pending legislation is carried by dominant Democrats and backed by one or more of the party's liberal factions, such as labor unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates, injury attorneys or minority rights groups. They are particularly eager to get their measures enacted this week because the Oct. 7 recall election could bounce Democratic Gov. Gray Davis from office.

As he fights the recall, meanwhile, Davis has abandoned the centrism he espoused for many years and shifted markedly to the left, endorsing items on the liberal agenda -- such as tax increases, gay rights legislation, driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and a wide array of union benefits -- that he had shunned earlier. He wants to focus Democratic support against the recall and therefore is catering to the party's liberal interest groups -- even though his actions may alienate moderate voters. Most voters, for example, oppose the immigrant driver's license measure.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is doing much the same thing as he campaigns to succeed Davis should the governor he recalled. Bustamante, too, had carefully straddled the political centerline during his career as a legislator and statewide official, but now is paddling his canoe furiously to the left.

The oddest aspect of this syndrome is that in the real world outside the Capitol, Californians are anything but ideological warriors.

Democratic registration has dropped from 49.6 percent in 1990 to 44.1 percent this year, and Democrat-dominated counties have declined from 44 in 1990 to 22 today. Republicans' voter share has dropped, too, from 39.1 percent to 35.3 percent during the same period, but their decline has been proportionately smaller, and the gap between the parties is the lowest in more than a decade. Tellingly, independent "declined-to-state" voters are the fastest-growing bloc.

A Field Poll released this week found that 43 percent of California's voters describe themselves as middle-of-the-roaders, far outnumbering the 32 percent self-proclaimed conservatives or the 25 percent who say they're liberals. In fact, one might say that the overwhelmingly liberal tilt to the Legislature reflects the sentiments of just a quarter of the electorate.

The voter and polling data underscore what election results have shown on many occasions: Success awaits those who cultivate California's political middle. Repeatedly, voters have rejected candidates for major office whom they see as being dogmatic conservatives or liberals and have opted, instead, for those who profess moderation -- which is why Davis won the governorship in the first place.

Davis fell out of favor because he didn't build on his self-proclaimed centrism to deal forthrightly with issues that arose during his governorship. In his poll-driven zeal to march along the middle of the political road, he forgot that he was also supposed to provide leadership for the state.

As Davis and Bustamante join the Legislature's leftward shift, they may be allowing Republicans -- who have been marginalizing themselves on the right -- to regain traction in a state in which they were once nearly dominant. Were Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, a self-described centrist, to capture the governorship on Oct. 7 by drawing substantial support from independents and moderate Democrats, it would set a new tone for California politics. The Democratic hegemony that had seemed so secure just a few months ago would be undermined, and two-party politics would return to California.

Politicians can spew all the red meat rhetoric they want to those on the ideological extremes, but how California's middle-of-the-road voters lean will determine who wins.