The west: America's new bellwether

Yet the region has been and remains less fixed in its political traditions than broad regional swaths elsewhere in America. It has many nonpartisan mayors and city managers, and legislatures often take a back seat to direct democracy through ballot initiatives. It generally lacks strong unions that direct races. Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado are true swing states now…

“States with static populations tend to have static politically allegiances,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. States in the Mountain and Pacific time zones have had some of the greatest population growth of the last 20 years, he said, “and it’s only natural that a newly arrived resident isn’t going to have the same political loyalties as someone whose great-great-grandparents signed the Declaration of Independence.”…

If Americans are paying more attention to the West, it may be because many issues on their minds have been pondered here for decades. A position on Arizona’s new immigration law, which requires the police to ask about the immigration status of people stopped for violations of the law, has become the litmus test among many G.O.P. primary candidates. President Obama, who has tried not to be dragged into an immigration debate in an election year, was forced to meet with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona to discuss their disagreement over the law.

“If you think about some of the big issues of the day,” said Matthew J. Burbank, associate professor of political science at the University of Utah, “energy, the environment, how you deal with population growth and scarce resources, particularly water — those are issues that are really in many ways central to the West. They are really part of the national discussion now, especially what is going on with the gulf. Immigration is another good example.”