Colorado likely to decide next president

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While Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have slid across the board as unemployment remains high, what buoys Democrats are the changing demographics of formerly Republican states like Colorado, where Democrats won a close Senate race in 2010, as well as Virginia and North Carolina.

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With growing cities and suburbs, they are populated by increasing numbers of educated and higher-income independents, young voters, Hispanics and African-Americans, many of them alienated by Republicans’ Tea Party agenda.

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In Colorado, the template for a repeat victory is last year’s campaign of Senator Michael Bennet. A Democratic novice, Mr. Bennet defeated a Tea Party Republican in a year when Republicans were triumphant nationwide. He built a coalition of Latino voters, Democrats like himself who are college-educated transplants to Colorado, and independents in Denver and Boulder.

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“No candidate can win this state without winning independent voters,” said Mr. Bennet, who joined Mr. Obama on his Denver visit, along with Gov. John W. Hickenlooper and Senator Mark Udall; all three will help Mr. Obama’s organization there in 2012.

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With independents, Mr. Bennet said, “The question that resonated in 2010 was, Do you want somebody who will go to Washington and try to work to solve problems, or do you want somebody who will simply be a partisan?” They will seek a problem-solver again next year, he added, “and I think the president has a strong case to make.”

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A challenge for Mr. Obama in Colorado and elsewhere is mobilizing Hispanic voters, many of whom complain that he has not tried hard enough to overcome Republican opposition to immigration legislation. And appealing to independents will require some deft politics, since Mr. Obama’s recent switch to a more confrontational approach with Congressional Republicans could cost independent support even as he energizes Democratic voters.

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Terry Nelson, a campaign adviser to George W. Bush, John McCain and, this year, the former candidate Tim Pawlenty, said he was “pretty optimistic” for 2012, partly because Mr. Obama’s support among lower-income, less-educated white voters, never high, has dropped enough that Republicans see good prospects for winning industrial-belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

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But, Mr. Nelson acknowledged: “The country is changing. In every election cycle, every year, every day, this country becomes more ethnically diverse. And that has an impact on the kind of coalition that you need to put together to win.” He added, “The truth is, Obama needs fewer white voters in 2012 than he did in 2008.”

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Mr. Obama’s recent travel reflects his calculus. On Tuesday, he was in Colorado, at a high school in a heavily Hispanic Denver neighborhood, to promote his jobs plan. This month he was in Ohio, but also in Virginia and North Carolina; he may return soon on a bus tour of neighboring states, aides say. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in Northern Virginia on Thursday.

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Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado together have more than double the number of Ohio’s votes in the Electoral College — 37 versus 18. And Obama advisers say that the same demographic factors at play in those states are also present in states Mr. Obama lost in 2008 — like Arizona (whose senior senator, Mr. McCain, was his rival) and Georgia.