WASHINGTON — Even as the first potential candidates move toward the starting line, the ground may be shifting in the 2008 race for the White House.
This month's midterm election highlighted cracks in an electoral landscape that had been unusually stable.
Democrats have been hurt by the inability of their recent presidential candidates to wage competitive campaigns across a vast swath of the country. But the party emerged from this year's vote confident that in 2008, it can compete on a much wider playing field -- especially in the West and several states on the fringe of the South.
"If you look at the results from '06, you see a lot of states that Democrats may be able to take ... if they can swing the center the way they did" this year, said Ruy Teixeira, a public opinion analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank.
Many Republicans acknowledge that the midterm results mean they may be forced to strenuously defend states such as Colorado and Virginia in 2008, which the party's recent presidential nominees considered safely in their camp.
But they also insisted that a Democratic presidential nominee would probably find it difficult to steer as moderate a course as Democrats who triumphed this year in GOP-leaning states, such as Gov.-elect Bill Ritter in Colorado and Sen.-elect Jim Webb in Virginia.
What both sides agree on is that after few shifts in the electoral map this decade -- only three states changed hands between the presidential races of 2000 and 2004 -- the sweeping Democratic gains in 2006 raise the possibility that fresh battlegrounds and alignments will determine the White House winner.
"It makes 2008 a fascinating chessboard to look at," said Republican strategist Tom Rath, an advisor to likely GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, Massachusetts' governor.
Stability has been the watchword in the race for the White House, not only in President Bush's two campaigns, but in the two elections won by Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Thirty-four states have supported the same party in each of the last four elections, the highest level in decades.
On balance, this hardening division has hurt Democrats more than Republicans. Although Democrats have won 18 states (and the District of Columbia) worth 248 electoral college votes in four consecutive elections, they have struggled since 2000 to challenge Republicans for much terrain beyond that base.
