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Democrats are rightly optimistic about their prospects in the midterm elections of 2006. The conditions certainly appear ripe for a political sea-change: The Bush administration has compiled a record of failure, both at home and abroad. The Republican-controlled Congress has been unable to address any of the major challenges facing the nation. And the GOP as a whole has descended into a downward spiral of extremism, corruption, incompetence, and fundamental dishonesty.

Taken together, that political baggage may be more than enough to outweigh the Republican Party's built-in advantages. The GOP has strengthened its position through partisan gerrymandering, the sheer number of red states on the electoral map, and the ruthless exercise of the powers of incumbency.

Democrats may succeed in making major gains in the coming off-year elections, and thus achieve the once-distant goals of recapturing Congress and winning a clear majority of governorships. But it will still require a persistent, strategic effort to build an enduring Democratic majority for the presidential election of 2008 and beyond.

The most important thing will be to improve Democratic performance in fast-growing areas of the country -- the places where Americans move in search of safe streets, backyards, and barbecues -- and especially in highly competitive battleground states. Some demographic trends, such as the rapid increase in the Hispanic vote, may eventually work in Democrats' favor. But short-term geographic growth patterns will help Republicans unless Democrats do something to expand their electoral base -- something more than just mobilizing the vote in urban areas, which typically are not growing, or are actually losing population.

That is the top-line conclusion of a major new Democratic Leadership Council study, based on election data supplied by political demographer Mark Gersh of the National Committee for an Effective Congress. The report finds a strong correlation nationally and in many states between Republican voting performance and growth rates in the voting-age population. The trend holds true in large and small counties, suburbs and exurbs, "fringe" areas and small towns.

To put it simply, Republican areas are growing rapidly, while Democratic areas are not. Nationwide, the voting age population in large Republican-leaning counties (those where President George W. Bush won more than 55 percent of the vote in 2004) grew 9.8 percent between 2000 and 2004. But large Democratic-leaning counties (those where John Kerry won more than 55 percent of the vote in 2004) grew by just 2.2 percent. The trend was virtually identical in the more politically important battleground states that have been the focus of attention in the last two presidential elections. There, large Republican-leaning counties grew by 9.5 percent, while large Democratic-leaning counties grew by just 1.7 percent.

Heroic effort. There are some important exceptions to the trend, of course -- most notably in the battleground states of Florida and New Mexico. But in 2004, Republicans benefited crucially from an expanding pool of potential voters in their base areas -- such as Douglas County, Colo., south of Denver, and Warren County, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. At the same time, Democrats suffered from a shrinking or stagnant pool of potential voters in their base areas -- cities such as Cleveland and Philadelphia. So, for the immediate future, demography will not by itself create a Democratic majority.

In fact, the evidence from 2004 shows that voting-age population growth in Republican areas, not voter mobilization, was the single most important factor in helping the GOP boost its vote from four years earlier. Conversely, Democratic turnout efforts, especially in large cities, were very successful, often producing sharp increases in total votes cast and Democratic vote margins, despite reductions in the size of the voting age population in those cities.

Take Cleveland. The voting-age population in the county that surrounds it, Cuyahoga, dropped by 22,000 people between 2000 and 2004. Yet, due to a heroic get-out-the-vote effort, 105,000 more ballots were cast there in 2004 than in 2000 -- and the Democratic margin of victory in the county grew by 55,000 votes. That same pattern repeated itself in Denver, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit, among other cities. Given the trend, successful Democratic mobilization efforts may soon reach the point of diminishing returns if the party fails to broaden its geographical reach by honing political messages that can hold down or eclipse Republican margins in fast-growing areas.

It's not hard to find examples of "success stories" in which non-presidential Democratic candidates have performed well in Republican-tilting high-growth areas. Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar did it in 2004. North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley did it in his re-election campaign that year. And Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine did it in 2005. The common denominators were deft voter-targeting strategies and appealing political messages that helped the party expand its base in fast-growing areas.

Taken together, the findings in the DLC's report shed a great deal of light on a perennial debate among Democrats about how to break through the partisan parity of recent years and achieve a long-term majority.

One prevailing theory has been that demographic trends will ultimately help produce a Democratic majority. That theory gives great weight to such factors as the growing Hispanic population, and it assumes that aversion to Republican policies will keep minority voters, unmarried women, and socially moderate professionals disproportionately in the Democratic column.

A second theory, favored by many party activists, has been that the Democratic Party machine is badly outmoded at the nuts-and-bolts level of technological and human infrastructure, compared with the GOP. That allegedly explains the 2002 and 2004 election results. It follows that the way to create a national majority is to invest heavily in state-of-the-art voter mobilization capabilities that can maximize "base" turnout.

And a third theory, supported by the DLC's new study, is that Democrats must expand the party's base by increasing their geographical and demographic reach, particularly in fast-growing areas of the country, through message-based persuasion.

Expansion by persuasion. The trends documented in the DLC study do not provide any one-size-fits-all strategy for Democrats, now or in the future. But they do strongly suggest that, overall, Democrats cannot expect demography alone to turn red areas blue (especially in the next few elections). Nor can they simply rely on ever-more-intensive base mobilization efforts to squeeze sufficient votes from a limited pool of potential voters. Careful attention to demographic challenges and opportunities is always important, and robust voter-mobilization capabilities are critical, especially in close elections. But expanding the Democratic base by persuasion must assume a more central place in any future Democratic strategy.

Expanding the Democratic base into the places that are growing the fastest will enable the party to maximize its gains in elections when the political tide is already flowing in a positive direction, as it is this year. By the same token, the next time there is a close contest like the presidential election of 2004, expanding the party's base into those fast-growing areas could make the difference between a bitter defeat and a victory.

Ed Kilgore is vice president for policy at the Democratic Leadership Council.