THE POLITICS OF OSCAR\It may be an election-year accident, but the Academy Awards race\looks surprisingly like GOP primary tussle.

Byline: Daily News Film Writer

Hollywood is supposed to be full of liberal Democrats. But they're acting a lot like Republicans lately, at least as far as the 68th Academy Awards are concerned.

Like this year's presidential primaries, the Oscar contest opened with a Bob Dole-style front-runner, "Apollo 13," that came from deep inside the prevailing system but faltered in the early preliminary heats.

However, after the voters took a good look at some of those surprise upstarts, they appear to have closed ranks behind the original establishment candidate.

Some of the other Best Picture nominees even resemble Republican also-rans. "Braveheart," a literal realization of Pat Buchanan's "peasants with pitchforks" rhetoric, upset the race when it earned the most nominations back in mid-February. Like Buchanan, though, that's when it peaked; voters seem to have realized that, at its core, Mel Gibson's medieval military epic is just a really bitchen Conan movie.

Meanwhile "Babe," the story of a piglet who, without any experience or qualifications, chased after an important leadership position, might smell a bit too much like Steve Forbes' losing campaign. Word is that some academy voters, who weren't inclined to rush right out and see a talking-pig movie when it opened last summer, felt "Babe" had been a tad overhyped by the time they gave it a gander - kind of like a flat tax, if you will.

As for "The Postman" and "Sense and Sensibility" - well, they're completely foreign, and we know how well that's playing this election year.

No surprise, then, that the late momentum's rocketing the heroic American astronaut movie. The product of two of Hollywood's favorite (though this year non-Oscar nominated) sons, director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks, "Apollo" has won three of the four major industry guild competitions in recent weeks. And "Apollo's" sweep of the People's Choice Awards was equivalent to winning the popular vote in presidential terms, a point surely not lost on academy electors.

Still, anything could happen at Monday night's awards ceremony. If there's one quality this year's Oscar derby shares more than any other with the presidential race, it's that voters wish they had better choices.

"It's one of those years when there are no movies that people feel really passionate about," observed Damien Bona, author (with the late Mason Wiley) of the definitive "Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards," which has just published its 10th anniversary edition. "Last year, you had the 'Forrest Gump' vs. the 'Pulp Fiction' contingent. The year before that it was 'Schindler's List' and 'The Piano.'

"This was just a year when there were a lot of pictures people liked without being too enthusiastic about them," Bona concluded. "That's reflected in how the nominations have been spread."

And that spread should continue on through the actual awards, with "Braveheart" likely to pick up a few more statuettes than "Apollo," if not the top prize. Gibson looks to be the Best Directing choice: the vast logistics of "Braveheart's" battle scenes, the fact that he's an actor (like six of the last 18 directing winners) and the absence of competition from Directors Guild Award winner Howard all conspire to make Gibson the lethal leader in this category.

The only sure bet throughout the entire awards season has been Nicolas Cage as Best Actor in a Leading Role for his unapologetic alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas." He has won every single preliminary prize, from critics' groups to Golden Globes to the Screen Actors Guild awards. Not even the sentimental vote for Massimo Troisi, the Italian comedian who sacrificed his life in order to complete "The Postman," appears strong enough to stop the uncompromising Cage's juggernaut of admiration.

A different kind of sentimentality, however, should rule the Best Actress in a Leading Role race. For the first time in years, most observers agree, 1995 offered an impressive array of meaty roles for actresses. Too much of a good thing to choose from in at least one category this year, however, might have been too much for those delicate academy voters to handle. They're expected to give the award to Susan Sarandon, as much for the perception that the oft-nominated actress is just plain due as for her reactive performance in "Dead Man Walking."

Working against possible spoiler and Golden Globe Award winner Sharon Stone - whom Bona characterizes as the "Red Buttons, we didn't know you had it in you" candidate - is the fact that most people hated "Casino." Of course, the same argument could be made about Cage, except his work was great where Stone's is more along the lines of a pleasant surprise.

The Actor in a Supporting Role competition is still pretty volatile; its outcome could well be a harbinger of how the rest of the night will go. If Ed Harris wins, it's time to finally place money on "Apollo 13." However, if James Cromwell, who played the beloved Farmer Hoggett, gets that prize, prepare for a Forbes ... er, that is, a "Babe" upset.

Of course, if Kevin Spacey wins for "The Usual Suspects," it means the academy has deeper reserves of good taste than we reckoned. And if it's "12 Monkeys' " Brad Pitt, it's further proof that the voters have gone as crazy as we thought.

A three-way heat has developed in the Actress in a Supporting Role category. There's some thought that Mira Sorvino's ditsy "Mighty Aphrodite" hooker has been overpromoted by relentless distributor Miramax Films (the same may be said of "The Postman"; as with "Pulp Fiction" and "The Crying Game" in previous years, Miramax's scorched-earth academy campaigns tend to yield spectacular nomination results but precious few actual Oscars).

Joan Allen's Pat Nixon is probably the most admired of this bunch. The Screen Actors Guild even nominated her for a Lead Actress award and, as we've noted, this isn't a bad academy year for acting like a Republican. But again, "Nixon" was a movie many people hated. "Sense and Sensibility," on the other hand, was a picture everyone liked, at least a little. Giving an award to co-star Kate Winslet wouldn't be as unseemly as giving two to Emma Thompson, who, everyone figures, has the Adapted Screenplay Oscar sewn up.

Thompson's interpretation of Jane Austen is the second surest bet of the year, eclipsed only by Nicolas Cage. However, this presents a historical glitch in the Best Picture category, should things go according to late trends.

No film has won a Best Picture Oscar without also winning a directing or some kind of writing statuette in almost half a century (since the 1949 "All the King's Men," to be exact). Good precedent for "Sense" (whose director, Ang Lee, was not nominated), not so good for "Apollo" (whose director, as we know, wasn't either).

Maybe it's the best omen of all for "Braveheart," which took the Writers Guild of America's Award for Original Screenplay. Of course, everyone except the Writers Guild voters seems to recognize that "Braveheart" is just a really bitchen Conan movie. Barring a complete "Braveheart" blitz, "Suspects" should squeak by.

While the awards fall on Monday, the day before California's primary election, don't expect them to represent any kind of ringing political statement. However many superficial resemblances this year's volatile Oscar race bears to the Republican primaries, inside-Hollywood politics is the only kind that really matter here.

And let's not forget the traditional academy clueless vote. Some think it's the organization's biggest bloc.

"I don't think most academy members vote with an agenda, or even think that way," Bona observed. "When the nominations were released, some pundits thought the voters were trying to show Washington that they had family values. But most of them probably aren't perceptive enough to analyze things that way."

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Photo (1) "Sense and Sensibility" (2) "The Postman" (3) "Babe" (4) "Apollo 13" (5) "Braveheart" (6) Sean Penn "Dead Man Walking" (7) Massimo Troisi "The Postman (Il Postino)" (8) Richard Dreyfuss "Mr. Holland's Opus" (9) Nicolas Cage "Leaving Las Vegas" (10) Anthony Hopkins "Nixon" (11) Elisabeth Shue "Leaving Las Vegas" (12) Susan Sarandon "Dead Man Walking" (13) Sharon Stone "Casino" (14) Meryl Streep "Bridges of Madison County (15) Emma Thompson "Sense and Sensibility" (16--Cover--Color) Good at gold? (Oscar) (17--Cover--Color) No caption (Apollo 13) (18--Cover--Color) No caption (Babe) (19--Cover--Color) No caption (Braveheart) (20--Cover--Color) No caption (The Postman) (21--Cover--Color) No caption (Sense and Sensibility) Chart (Movie awards)