Election wild card: mobile voters

"A lot of the growing suburbs around Charlotte, Raleigh, and Atlanta don't behave like Southern suburbs because, well, they're not," says Jennifer Duffy, a Senate analyst for the Cook Political Report in Washington. "We've certainly seen Democrats being more competitive in North Carolina."

The trend in the fast-growing Rocky Mountain states, on the other hand, seems to favor Republicans. Since 1992, the GOP has gone from holding three Western governorships to eight. Their advantage in Senate and House seats has grown from 23-17 to 31-9. In Colorado, their advantage among voters has more than tripled, to just under 200,000. "We have seen a general [Republican] shift in terms of registration ... over the past decade," says Colorado pollster Paul Talmey.

Yet local Democrats argue that many of the newcomers are up for grabs. "They're like a lot of the people who have lived here for years – in that they'll do a lot of ticket splitting, voting for the candidates they like rather than the party," says state Sen. Penfield Tate (D).

Demographer William Frey of the University of Michigan points out that much Colorado's growth has come from California, particularly from "would-be suburbanites that have felt they're not living in suburbs anymore in places like Orange County or Riverside County or the suburbs outside San Francisco." Many of these residents came to work in Colorado's burgeoning technology industry, and while they're often economically conservative, he says, they may be more liberal socially: "After all, they've lived in California." The white-suburbanite influx has also created more jobs for lower-skilled workers, Mr. Frey adds, adding to a Hispanic population that tends to vote Democratic.

Perhaps the best indication of Colorado's potential to become more of a swing state is the fact that the current Senate race is one of the tightest in the nation. Both candidates have tacked toward the center on issues: Strickland has emphasized his support for President Bush on Iraq, while Allard has been touting his actions on environmental issues.

Certainly, the influx of newcomers has taken away some advantages of incumbency for Allard, a former veterinarian who served three terms in the House before being elected to the Senate in 1996. Although Allard has made it his trademark to hold annual town meetings in each of Colorado's 64 counties, campaign manager Dick Wadhams admits that the senator has essentially had to reintroduce himself to many voters.

For his part, challenger Strickland argues that population growth has created new opportunities, by broadening the playing field. "We're competing for votes in every single part of the state," says the former US Attorney.

• Ed Halloran contributed to this report from Denver.

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