Candidates Running Closest In the West
Demographics Shifting In Mountain States

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 25, 2008

DENVER -- On Thursday, Sen. Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination here before a crowd of around 70,000, a figure with resonance in the Mountain West: Had Sen. John F. Kerry flipped that number of votes combined in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada in 2004, he would have been president.

Four years later, nowhere in the country is the race so close as in this region. Most polls show Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, tied in Colorado and Nevada, Obama up a little in New Mexico and McCain with a small lead in Montana.

And nowhere is the electorate as much in flux as it is across the Mountain West, by far the fastest-growing region in the nation, with millions of new residents coming for fresh starts, better jobs and stunning vistas -- and bringing loose political affiliations. In Colorado, nearly half of those who have moved from elsewhere in the United States since 2000 have come from Democratic-leaning California, yet the biggest jump in registrations has been among the "unaffiliated," who in June surpassed Republicans as the largest political category.

The Obama campaign sees signs that many of the new arrivals are inclined its way. In Colorado, for instance, a disproportionate share of new residents are Hispanics or whites with college degrees, both groups that tilt Democratic, while the share of working-class white voters has fallen.

Recent statewide elections offer further signs of a shift. Democrats hold the majority of U.S. House seats from Colorado and are favored to win the state's second Senate seat this fall. In Montana, Democrats hold both Senate seats and the governor's office. Even in Arizona, where Democrats face a bigger gap because it is McCain's home state, the party picked up two House seats in 2006. Polls show Obama trailing there by 10 points or less.

"It didn't used to be this way," said Federico Peña, who served in the Colorado legislature before becoming mayor of Denver and both secretary of energy and secretary of transportation in the Clinton administration. "The unaffiliated voter has shifted, and we've seen it throughout the West."

The shift may also be a product of a landscape created by rampant growth. A common East Coast misperception is that the West is a land of wide-open spaces, with houses scattered hither and yon. In fact, because of the constraints of topography, water resources and land rights, the West's development is relatively compact -- Denver is more densely settled than Boston. Political science holds that the more densely settled an area, the more Democratic it tends to be.

"As people move into an area, they need more services, and there are more urban-type needs and problems," said Ruy Teixeira, co-author of a new Brookings Institution report on the region. "There's a little less of this 'Just leave me alone' stuff."

One of the region's few Republican governors, Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah, agreed, saying Western voters "are demanding different things today."

"Before, it was just 'Don't tread on me,' and strong on the Second Amendment. Now, it's quality of life, schools, human services. You've seen a change in focus, and Republicans are going to have to adapt," he said.

Still, McCain maintains many advantages. Colorado has the religious-conservative hub of Colorado Springs, as well as a large military population centered on the Air Force. The candidate's call for offshore oil drilling is popular with many Western residents who drive long distances and worry little about the impact on faraway coastal states. And, of course, McCain has represented Arizona for 26 years.

But Democrats say that carries relatively little weight, given that he is not a native Westerner and that a large proportion of people in the region are themselves not Westerners by birth. "He's really a Washington, D.C., guy. That's where he's spent the bulk of his time," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D). "I don't know that he carries the same Western brand that some candidates do."

Most heavily contested in this region are the nine Electoral College votes in Colorado, where Kerry lost by only four percentage points four years ago despite a less-than-sustained effort. The state lines up well for Obama, with the fourth-lowest percentage of people over 65 and the fourth-highest percentage of college graduates. Many voters have also been turned off by the Bush administration's aggressive efforts to promote oil and gas exploration in the Rocky Mountains.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (D) said Colorado is a good fit for Obama's tech-driven, entrepreneurial campaign and "yes, we can" message. "We're really a kind of melting pot where you move to when you're tired of the old structures," he said.

Most growth has been in the Denver metro area, which holds half of the state's population. In the process, heavily Republican outer suburbs such as those in Douglas County have become more mixed, as has Fort Collins in the north, though the Greeley area remains Republican.

Pat Waak, chair of the state Democratic Party, touted Obama's ground effort, which got an early start during the caucuses and which the campaign hopes to accelerate by using tickets to the acceptance speech at the convention as an incentive for volunteer participation. The places to watch, Waak said, are the populous inner suburbs of Denver, in Jefferson and Arapahoe counties.

Richard Wadhams, Waak's GOP counterpart, predicts that McCain will hold the state after voters learn more about Obama's stances on taxes, foreign policy and energy. "They like to talk" about their get-out-the-vote operation, he said of Democrats. "We don't talk about it. We just do it."

Most notable, perhaps, have been polls showing Obama doing well with Hispanic voters, despite losing them to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries, and despite McCain's past support for comprehensive immigration-law changes. Peña said Hispanic voters, even those whose families immigrated long ago, associate McCain with the anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric of other Republicans, particularly since he has tacked right on the issue. "It is the personal attacks that people are feeling, the attacks on anybody who is Hispanic," he said. "John McCain is tainted by that."

University of Colorado political scientist Ken Bickers doubts that Obama can get the turnout he needs from Hispanic voters, who make up a fifth of the state's eligible voters but historically turn out in low numbers. "If he doesn't get the Latino vote out, he will almost certainly lose," he said.

The Hispanic vote looms largest in New Mexico, where the population's deeper roots translate to a higher proportion of eligible voters -- more than a third of those in the state, the highest percentage in the country. President Bush narrowly won the state's five electoral votes in 2004 by campaigning hard in the rural east. He also won a sizable minority of its Hispanic voters, who are less motivated than those elsewhere by the immigration issue, which has been less divisive in the state.

This year, the Obama campaign is investing in rural New Mexico, with 24 offices across the state, including one in Navajo Nation territory. But it is also counting on the growing number of college-educated professionals in the Albuquerque area.

Nevada, with five electoral votes, is more demographically promising for Republicans -- it has more working-class white voters, and while there has been a huge surge in Hispanic residents, relatively few are eligible to vote. But Obama is banking on a jump in voter registrations after last winter's caucuses -- Democrats now hold a 60,000-voter advantage -- and the combined strength of the Las Vegas unions that backed him and the local Democratic machine that backed Clinton. The state is the fastest growing in the country, but it also has the highest foreclosure rate.

While Obama can count on an edge in the Las Vegas area, he is also running even around Reno, rare for a Democrat. He is broadcasting ads in the state targeting McCain's support for a nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain. Nevada's Republicans, meanwhile, are in some disarray, with a governor embroiled in scandal and a large Ron Paul contingent that has divided the state party.

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki (R) was sanguine about McCain's chances but added that the candidate could help nail the state down if he picks as his running mate former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is very popular in Nevada's sizable Mormon community. "It would be significant," he said.

The Democrats' most ambitious push is in Montana, which went for Bush by 20 points in 2004. Obama has more than 50 paid staff members in the state and has been running ads for months, while McCain has so far made no visible effort to defend it.

John Melcher, a Democrat and former senator from Montana, said McCain hurt himself in the state by opposing the latest farm bill. Montana farmers find the bill flawed, Melcher said, but they still wanted it passed. Add to that the new residents moving to Montana, and Obama might have a shot. "To start with, it sounded pretty tough," Melcher said. "But as it's working out, it's in the cards."