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LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Americans have trekked West in search of riches for more than 150 years -- and Barack Obama is doing the same.

Like the country's original frontier settlers, the Democratic presidential hopeful is driven to this Republican-leaning region by a sense of opportunity -- and a quest for power.

He desperately wants to win in GOP rival John McCain's domain, and is playing hard in fast-growing Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico while watching, likely in vain, for a potential opening in Arizona -- the state his opponent represents in the Senate.

"This region is very much in play," said Brian Sanderoff, a nonpartisan pollster in Albuquerque, N.M. "The fact that McCain is a westerner from a nearby state will be offset by the Democratic mood of the nation, thereby making the race really competitive in the West."

Tight polls and constant attention from both candidates attest to that little more than two months before the election.

Democrats dominate liberal coastal states, compete strongly in the swing-voting Midwest and typically cede the conservative South to Republicans. They have fiercely competed for the West in recent presidential elections, seemingly with little place else to turn to try to ramp up their electoral vote count.

They've had mixed success.

After decades of GOP dominance in presidential elections, Democrat Bill Clinton won Nevada and New Mexico in back-to-back elections in the 1990s, though Clinton won Colorado once and Arizona once. Democrat Al Gore won only New Mexico in 2000, and by a razor-thin margin, and Democrat John Kerry lost all four in 2004.

This year, for reasons both political and demographic, Obama has focused on Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico as top states to try to seize from Republicans in his bid to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Combined, the three offer 19 votes.

He has spent all summer pouring money and manpower into these states and will accept the party's nomination next week at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. At least for now the fourth, Arizona, is getting almost no attention; McCain has a comfortable lead there in polls.

"If Obama's able to win in these states it will have more to do with national trends against the Republican Party manifesting themselves than with political and demographic changes on the ground," said Bob Loevy, an authority on Western politics at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. "That national shift has to be great enough to upset the historical pattern of these states tending to vote Republican for president."

Democrats argue that a host of factors are coming together to give them their best chance in years in the West: a national malaise about the past eight years under the Republican President Bush, Democratic victories in recent statewide elections, and, primarily, an influx of new Democratic-leaning residents. They include scores of Hispanics drawn by jobs and land as well as urban liberals from the coastlines seeking recreation and retirement.

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