New Mexico might be the least contested among the battleground states, even though a poll by The Albuquerque Journal from early September showed the race as close. Still, its unique demographics hold weighty significance for both campaigns, which have been on the ground trying, proving, improving and disproving strategies to engage Latino voters — eyeing both the November elections and the future.

The Obama campaign will open its 13th office here next Sunday, more than doubling its presence in the state over the previous month even as New Mexico leans toward Mr. Obama. Eight of them are strategically positioned in areas with large numbers of Hispanics. On the ground, organizers have been given more latitude to experiment.

A meeting among volunteers and the campaign’s national political director, Katherine Archuleta, happened around a kitchen table, as the women sat making tamales. To draw multiple generations to the same event, volunteers in Albuquerque’s Westside neighborhood put together a car show; hundreds of people showed up. Mobilization efforts do not necessarily carry the “Votemos Todos” label — “Everyone Vote” — carried by events in other states that are specifically geared toward Latinos.

According to Census Bureau projections, by 2030 the Hispanic share of the country’s population will nearly double, to 23 percent from 13 percent, while the non-Hispanic white population is likely to drop by 16 points, to 53 percent.

The number of school-age Hispanics has already increased by more than five million nationwide since 2000, while non-Hispanic whites dropped by three million. Over the coming decade, aging alone is poised to increase the number of Hispanics who are eligible to vote by 25 percent, according to the Census Bureau, stirring a profound transformation of the American electorate regardless of the size or consistency of the flow of new immigrants into the country.

“The trajectory is that places outside of New Mexico will start looking more and more like New Mexico, not just because of the number of third- and fourth-generation families or English-language preference, but because of the inevitable political power that, even if slowly, Hispanics are bound to acquire,” said Gabriel R. Sánchez, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico and the director of research at Latino Decisions, which studies Latino voting trends.

The state’s secretary for economic development, Jon Barela, a Republican, said that “New Mexico can offer a lot of clues as to where the country is moving,” as well as “validate the notion” that there is nothing incongruous about being Hispanic and being Republican. (Like many Hispanic elected officials here, Mr. Barela traces his roots to the settlers who were granted plots of land by Mexico before New Mexico became part of the United States.)