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WASHINGTON — In the end, the selection of the next president of the United States came down in many ways to voters in heavily Jewish South Florida.

And in a major twist, the votes that might have mattered most were the ones elderly Jews may have inadvertently cast for Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate known for his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements.

Florida's 25 electoral votes hung in the balance throughout the night Tuesday, as both Al Gore and George W. Bush were declared Florida's winner at different points during the night, only to have the state wind up as the ultimate wild card.

With both houses of Congress staying Republican for the next two years, many Jewish activists, who tend to push a more liberal agenda, were looking to the presidential election to give them some allies in Washington.

The outcome of the congressional races was disappointing to many Jewish groups, who worry that legislative issues they were hoping to advance in the next Congress will have to wait at least another two years.

Particularly on domestic issues such as hate crimes legislation and gun control, the Jewish organizational agenda is likely to face the same hurdles experienced in the 106th Congress.

In the wee hours of the morning Wednesday, after the Bush campaign had started celebrating and Gore had conceded defeat in a phone call to the Texas governor — a call he later retracted — the GOP appeared to control both houses of Congress and the executive branch.

But state officials ordered a recount of the presidential race in Florida, after seeing it was being called by a margin of less than half a percent of the votes. Results of the outcome were not expected until after press time.

At the center of it all were ballots in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, which have large Jewish populations.

Although Jews made up only 5 percent of Florida's vote, a large bulk of the constituency was from that area, which includes many retirement communities.

"Those numbers we knew were very heavily Democratic," said media consultant Matthew Dorf. "They happen to also be the Jewish districts."

Also not fully counted were overseas absentee ballots, which will include Florida voters traveling abroad and those who live in Israel, as well as members of the military. The state accepts overseas ballots up to 10 days after Election Day.

What could prove pivotal — and portends a legal battle — is a group of ballots that may have been inadvertently cast for Buchanan.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) told CNN that voters in Palm Beach County, a heavily Jewish area, were leaving the polling place crying because they had voted for Buchanan by accident.

Some voters were apparently confused because of the way the ballot was structured.

Ballots showed candidates on both sides of the ballot, in every-other-page order. So while Bush-Cheney was immediately followed by Gore-Lieberman on the left page, interjected between them was Buchanan.

"There is no doubt that there was much confusion at Palm Beach County yesterday at the ballot box," Wexler told CNN.

He said Buchanan received 3,000 votes in the county, compared with an average of 400 in other districts.

It is unclear whether those votes were all Jews, or how many of those voters intended to vote for Gore, but with just hundreds of votes dividing the candidates, they could be significant.