After months knocking on doors and pounding pavement for Democratic candidates, deep down she knows it might not slow the Republican juggernaut in her Washington County voting precinct.

"Any candidate that we run is only able to get about 25 to 27 percent of the vote no matter what they do, no matter how hard they try, so that's pretty discouraging for us," she said.

She's trying to eat the elephant one bite at a time, but at the end of the day it's Utah, and everyone votes Republican. Right?

Don't tell that to John Anderson. For four decades, Anderson, 67, has plowed headlong into the Democratic barrage in his neighborhood, one of the three most liberal in the state.

"It's like swimming upstream," Anderson said of working his precinct northeast of Trolley Square shopping center in central Salt Lake City.

Together, Spinelli, Anderson and other foot soldiers toil against the trends, fighting a principled ground war on opposite sides of the political spectrum, belying Utah's typical homogeny.

"You have to see some improvements all the time to keep in there fighting. . . . It's small steps that we have to take and we can't expect to change things overnight," said Spinelli, who started a group for Southern Utah Democratic women, now some 200 strong, which she says lets Democrats discuss their views without being looked down on by the community.

Carol Carter knows what that's like.

A small-business woman in Old Town Park City, Carter moved to the precinct about two years ago and was stunned when only two people showed up at the neighborhood GOP caucus earlier this year.

Republicans are outnumbered 3-to-1 in her precinct and hers is the only house on the street with a Republican lawn sign in the yard. Even at dinner parties, she says, she's put on the hot seat by Democratic friends.

"I've had people get mad at me, 'How can you support these Republican candidates?' " she says. "You're always having to defend yourself and come up with extraordinary reasons to defend your views."

The Salt Lake Tribune analyzed returns from all 1,568 precincts in the 2000 election, focusing on the results of three statewide races - the gubernatorial, senate and presidential campaigns. Among the findings:

Two hundred and twenty-one Utah precincts lean toward or are solidly in the Democratic camp. About one in 10 precincts - 132 in all - are battleground precincts, where the parties were separated by less than 5 percentage points. The remaining precincts fell into the Republican column, with 230 leaning Republican and 985 solidly Republican, with GOP candidates receiving more than 60 percent of the vote.

No group of voters was more rock-solid Republicans than those in the polygamous enclave of Hildale. Of the 479 votes cast in the three races, one vote went for Democratic Senate candidate Scott Howell and one went to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Orton.

Republicans dominated in Garfield more than any other county, receiving 81 percent of the votes cast.

The most liberal precinct runs along the south side of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake County, from the mouth of the canyon to Alta and Snowbird, where Democrats pulled down 77 percent of the ballots cast.

Carbon County remains the strongest Democratic county in the state, and the only one that leaned toward Democrats. But while it was once rare for a Republican to even run for countywide office, in 2000, Republicans won nine of 11 precincts in the county. President Bush won the county by 460 votes.

State Rep. Brad King, a Price Democrat, said he believes voters were concerned about public land and gun control issues, but is convinced Sen. John Kerry will easily win the county.

"These are probably the most conservative Democrats you'll find anywhere, in the vein of the union Democrat or the Southern Democrat," said King. "That's how I feel I am. It's certainly different from the national party."

They aren't scientific, but Anderson has theories on why his precinct is blue, including a large welfare population "afraid the gravy train will stop if they don't vote right."

"There are some socialists here who hate America and what it stands for and they'll vote for anything that will weaken America," said Anderson. "I've seen several of them come to the polls and I sometimes want to grab a baseball bat and say you can leave anytime."

While some precincts run red and others prefer blue, Nancy Plant's precinct in the foothills east of Salt Lake was purple in 2000 - 502 votes for Democrats, 502 votes for Republicans - although the precinct boundaries have changed some in this election.

"We used to be very solidly Republican and in the last 10 to 15 years we've been very evenly divided. . . . I wish I could take a guess for you, but I really can't," said Plant, who has lived in her home for 44 years. "This is a neighborhood and we respect each others rights and opinions and therefore we'll be good to each other."