Mail carrier Raul Quinones has seen a dramatic uptick in the six weeks in boldly-lettered, colorful campaign mail pieces sent to homes and apartments.

“A lot of times we get a whole stack, sometimes two or three of these per house,” Quinones said. “Today, it was like the majority of my mail.”

Quinones delivers to the 80909 Zip Code, on the east side of Colorado Springs. He’s dropped off dozens of mailers, if not hundreds, that sport the faces of President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. And there will be more, probably even past Tuesday’s election, depending when they were mailed.

Mountains of mailers are just one of many signs that Colorado is among a handful of so-called swing states in the presidential race, meaning the state’s election returns could be a deciding factor in whether Obama remains in the White House.

Colorado has nine electoral votes — Florida has 29, Ohio has 18, and Virginia has 13. But there are other swing states that have even fewer electoral votes — Iowa has six and New Hampshire has four. Those states are also seeing major spending by the campaigns, and it’s because of the math.

“We could play an outsized role,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado.

If Romney wins Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Iowa, and if Obama wins Ohio and New Hampshire, then Colorado could conceivably be the deciding factor, Udall said.

Colorado is “gettable” for both Democrats and Republicans, said Krista Kafer, executive director of Colorado’s Future Project, a nonpartisan research and outreach group.

There are almost the same number of registered Republicans and Democrats in the state — Republicans have an advantage of 6,175 voters out of 2.3 million active and inactive voters. There are also almost 1.3 million independent voters.

The presidential campaigns have spent tens of millions of dollars in Colorado on political advertising. According to The Washington Post, the campaigns have spent a combined $59 million in Colorado on TV ads alone. In the Colorado Springs TV market, $8 million has been spent on more than 27,000 ads.

That doesn’t include spending for mail pieces and radio ads.

The $8 million in the Colorado Springs market could be crucial to winning the state, said Udall. Many people don’t realize that El Paso County has the third most Democrats among Colorado’s 64 counties, he said. Denver has 227,000 Democrats, Boulder has 101,000, and El Paso has 94,000.

By contrast, El Paso County has easily the most Republicans — 177,000 to Denver’s 79,000 and Boulder’s 47,000.

Most of the campaign ads have been negative. On a national scale, 85 percent of Democratic TV ad spending has been on negative ads, and 91 percent of Republican TV ads have been negative, according to The Post.

“There are days when I wish we weren’t a swing state,” lamented Udall. “Just like every other Coloradan, we’ve had plenty of TV ads, plenty of mail, plenty of phone calls.”

The senator mentioned a recent video that went viral on YouTube, of a 4-year-old Fort Collins girl crying and saying she’s tired of “Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney.”

“She speaks for all of us,” Udall said, half-joking.

The girl may not have been speaking only about advertising — both campaigns have also had volunteers making endless phone calls to voters, to drum up support, push voters to the polls, and recite campaign rhetoric.

Colorado has gyrated between the two parties in other statewide elections — Democrats have ruled the governor’s mansion for the past six years, and Colorado’s two U.S. senators are Democrats, but the state has a two-term Republican attorney general, and elected a Republican secretary of state in 2010.

There have also been plenty of Republican governors, including Bill Owens, who led the state from 1999 to 2007.

Colorado has also evolved in the past decade from red to purple, as more out-of-staters migrated to Colorado from California and other places, said Kafer. Before 2008, Colorado went reliably for Republican presidential candidates. But the influx of out-of-state voters changed all that, and in the last election, Obama took Colorado’s nine electoral votes.—Contact John Schroyer: 476-4825Twitter: @JohnschroyerFacebook: Gazette John Schroyer

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama wave to the audience during the first presidential debate at the University of Denver, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012, in Denver. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) Photo by

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Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, and President Barack Obama, left, walk on stage at the end of their first debate at the University of Denver, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012, in Denver. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Mon Photo by