DENVER — A mother dances around her daughter's stroller to bouncy covers of the late Tejana superstar Selena while construction workers and local elected officials line up for tamales and rice and beans. All are waiting at a Denver park where politicians will again tell them their vote will make the difference.

It's a message Latinos have heard every election. But the 100 or so people at Rude Park are excited for a simple reason: This time, it might actually be true.

With the real possibility of a president of color, Latinos across the United States are fired up in ways community organizers say they have never seen. Democrats are counting on Barack Obama's historic candidacy to turn out a record number of Hispanic voters. And Republicans are banking on that turnout, too.

The nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials estimates that 9.2 million Hispanics will vote this year, up 21.5 percent from 2004. Democrats and Republicans alike are organizing unprecedented get-out-the-Hispanic-vote rallies, and polls suggest the nation's fastest-growing minority might just be the group that puts Obama over the edge.

In Colorado, among likely voters who are non-Hispanic whites, John McCain leads Obama 47 percent to 44 percent, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday. But with 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, Obama is up 50 percent to 41 percent overall among likely voters.

The sampling of black voters in Colorado was too small to count. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

That trend largely holds up in other battleground states. A recent study by the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, suggests that McCain leads New Mexico by four points without Hispanic votes, but trails by eight with them factored in. In Nevada, the two are tied without Latinos, but Obama leads 50 percent to 43 percent overall.

Obama surrogates are stressing that he is a minority to encourage Latinos to turn out big.

"Es uno de nosotros! He's one of us!" cried New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson during a Latino voter rally last weekend.

Meanwhile, Republicans insist Latinos could turn into a boon for McCain and that the race for the Latino vote is far from over.

"The values that John McCain has are the values that the Hispanics have," said California state Sen. Abel Maldonado, stumping for McCain. "Honesty, integrity and the respect for hard work. He understands us, he respects us."