Bush won Colorado by 51 percent to 43 percent in 2000. This time, some polls give the president a small lead, but several have shown the race as nearly even. The large active-duty and retired military population in the state is expected to give Bush a boost. Still, there is some anger among military families living near the Army's Fort Carson, where nearly every one of the 15,000 soldiers has been to Iraq and ordered to return for another tour.
Kerry is benefiting in Colorado from the coattails of two members of a prominent Democratic family. State Attorney General Ken Salazar seems to be leading in a close race for Colorado's open Senate seat; his brother, John Salazar, seems likely to win the race for the open House seat that covers the western half of the state. The two Salazars are expected to inspire a record turnout among Hispanic voters in the state, a bloc that tends to vote Democratic in presidential races as well.
Also in Nevada, where Bush won by 50 percent to 46 percent in 2000, the Senate race is a plus for the Democratic ticket. The state's most powerful politician, Sen. Harry M. Reid (D), looks like a shoo-in for a fourth Senate term. Reid has been campaigning vigorously for his friend Kerry, savaging Bush every day on an issue that resonates across party lines here: the Bush administration's decision to put the national nuclear waste dump site at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
In 2000, Bush told Nevadans he would base his decision about a nuclear waste site on "sound science." Republicans say he did that, but the Democratic position is that the state has been betrayed. "George Bush broke his promise to Nevada," Reid declares in a hard-hitting TV ad that is running constantly in the state's two major media markets. Kerry cast some Senate votes that could be construed as favoring a dump site at Yucca Mountain, but he has come out forcefully against it this year and has made the point on each of his five campaign trips to the state.
Bush won Arizona by 54 percent to 51 percent in 2000, and last month statewide polls showed him with a double-digit lead. The Kerry camp cut its advertising budget in the state, and political pros considered the state all but decided.
But the president has lost some of the advantage in October, recent polls show. When Kerry went to Arizona for the campaign's third debate last week, Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) pleaded with him to allocate more time and money to a state she said was winnable, according to Kerry staffers.
"I would think that Bush is still ahead here, but not by double digits any more," says Bruce Merrill, a pollster and political scientist at Arizona State University. "It's still a Republican state. It's still pretty much Barry Goldwater country. But we have a bloc of independent voters in Arizona who can turn any election. Bush seemed to have them in his hand in September. In the debates, though, I don't think there's any doubt that Kerry won. That didn't change the partisans, but I think we're going to see some of that independent vote here shifting to Kerry."
Al Gore carried New Mexico in 2000 by less than a half a percentage point. But Richardson won the gubernatorial race easily in 2002, and Democrats have been counting the state as a "likely" for Kerry since last winter.
Bush moved into a small lead, however, in September polls there, at a time when the "flip-flop" attack was undermining Kerry's appeal. Kerry came back after the first debate and showed a three-point lead statewide in an Albuquerque Journal poll at the beginning of October.
