"I told Rudy, I said, 'I can't wait to get to Farmington,' Bush said Thursday in a rare appearance by a sitting president in the Four Corners region. "You're going to meet some really fine people here. It's a part of the country where the boots outnumber the suits."

For more than two decades, the Mountain West also has been a part of the country where, in presidential elections, Republicans outnumber the Democrats. But Bush's off-the-beaten-path stop in Farmington underlines concerns that the Republican red may be fading in the southern reaches of the Intermountain region during a presidential election where every electoral vote is critical.

That Bush has made four trips this year to New Mexico, the only Mountain West state he lost to Democrat Al Gore in 2000 and then by only 366 votes, reveals that the political landscape of the West is in play. The latest poll conducted in August showed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry with a respectable 52 percent to 42 percent lead in New Mexico over Bush, with 6 percent of voters undecided.

The northern tier states of the Mountain West - Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana - remain solidly Republican, much as they have been since Ronald Reagan's groundbreaking 1980 campaign heralded a GOP shift in the region's presidential voting pattern, which up until then had followed national trends.

But polls in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado, all states Bush narrowly won in 2000, show he and Kerry are in virtual ties when the margins of error are considered. Democratic strategists believe the standings signal the erosion of the Republicans' comfortable Western stronghold.

"The fact we are only a couple points down in Nevada has got to be horrifying to the president," says Tad Devine, senior adviser to the Kerry campaign.

The Bush campaign unveiled an ad in Nevada last week attacking Kerry for flip-flopping on storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a plan supported by the Bush administration but opposed by most Nevadans. While initially voting to study the idea, Kerry has said in campaign appearances he would work to prevent waste storage at Yucca Mountain. Bush has been accused in Nevada of pushing forward with the dump in contradiction to a 2000 campaign pledge.

"Yucca Mountain is one issue, but I believe the people of Nevada and the people of the West understand that issue implicitly," says Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot. "We do believe that the president's values and his understanding of the issues of the West is unique and it qualifies him in superior fashion to respond to what it is the people of the West have in expectations."

Political scientists view the Yucca Mountain issue as symptomatic of the demographic changes in the West that are beginning to unwind with this election. The growth of New West metropolises such as Denver, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Las Vegas is being fueled by Hispanic immigrants and urban state relocators whose pro-environment ideology challenges Western land-use traditions.

At the same time, generational replacement of voters is taking place, with World War II veterans dying at accelerated rates, to be replaced on voter registration lists by young people who may not even be familiar with Vietnam.

"The long-term trends make a state like Nevada more susceptible to these issue appeals like Yucca Mountain, and what you have now is a state that is less likely to believe the Bush administration," says Brigham Young University Political Science Department Chair Kelly Patterson. "That lack of confidence is more likely a reflection of the demographic changes in the state."

While the Kerry and Bush campaigns work to solidify or expand each party's support in the southern tier of the Mountain West, the two campaigns have all but ignored the northern tier, where Kerry has little chance of winning electoral votes, states Bush can comfortably bypass to focus on battleground states.

"When you have limited resources, you have to prioritize on where you think you can be most effective," says Racicot, a former Montana governor. "The people in my home state are disappointed we haven't been there either."

GOP loyalists in Utah, a state that has consistently given Republican presidential candidates since Ronald Reagan some of the nation's biggest winning percentages, still sometimes wonder if they are being taken for granted. An unscientific but telling indication of the dilemma is the Madison Square Garden convention floor seating assignments this week, where New Mexico and Nevada delegates are placed much closer to the stage than a Utah delegation that has bled Republican red for decades.

"That's the downside for Utah in being so consistent in supporting the party," says Republican National Committee Utah committeeman Winston Wilkinson of Sandy. "In terms of how they parcel out the benefits at the conventions, it's tough to answer what do you bring to the party when every time there's an election we're 85 percent Republican."

Keeping the loyal base happy while still welcoming the evolving demographics and expanding population of the Mountain West promises to be a vexing problem for some time to the Republican Party, says Patterson.

"Over the long haul, there is going to be a redistribution of electoral votes from Northeastern states to the Intermountain West," he says. "All that will make the Intermountain West a larger player on the national stage, not this cycle or the cycle after it, but you can honestly look at a generation down the road where the Intermountain West will be a significant national player."