Los Angeles (dpa) - Eight years ago, the votes of Cuban exiles in Florida launched a Republican presidential era in the United States. On November 4, a similarly-decisive role could be played by young voters, and they are most likely to favour Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Largely won over by Obama's "change" discourse, millions of first- time voters are tilting the balance toward the senator for Illinois, according to opinion polls. If, as expected, they do vote for change, it will be difficult to stop the first African American from getting to the White House in the upcoming election.

Latinos, with an average age of 26, stand out among young voters.

"Young voters and Latino voters are almost synonymous in this election. The current tendency among young voters at the national level, no matter their ethnic or racial identity, is to be in favour of Obama," said Unai Montes-Irueste, director of a voter registration centre in California.

Montes-Irueste is convinced that young people will this time around get to pick the president of the United States.

"If Obama's campaign manages to win over the population of Latino voters in Nevada, who are mostly naturalized young people, he will carry that state," the election expert said.

Currently Obama has a 4.2-percentage-point advantage in the gambling state, which technically counts as a tie.

Obama has a stronger lead in Colorado and in New Mexico, with 6 per cent and 8.4 per cent advantages respectively, according to poll averages calculated by realclearpolitics.com.

US presidential elections are really 50 individual state contests for their winner-take-all electoral votes. In the indirect US election system for president, the states choose electors, who then choose the president on December 15.

"Young people can have an impact on the result" in Colorado and New Mexico, too, according to Montes-Irueste.

Recent opinion polls give the Democratic candidate a two-to-one advantage over his Republican rival John McCain among young voters.

"During the primaries alone, 1 million new voters registered, most of them independently, swept by the energy that the Democratic Party transmitted with all the intensity between Obama and Hillary Clinton," said Michael Bustamante, a political analyst and Latino voter registration activist in California.

In his opinion, the political panorama is swinging towards the Democrats based on demographics.

"In Florida alone, Latinos have changed a lot, and now the Cubans that vote for the Republican Party have been surpassed by the arrival of immigrants from South America and Central America," Bustamante noted.

Obama has a narrow 3.2-percentage-point lead in that key state, according to an average of polls calculated by realclearpolitics.com, which describes Florida currently as a toss-up state.

Bustamante stressed that in 2004 Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico sided with Republican incumbent George W Bush.

"This year New Mexico is with Obama. Missouri, which Bush carried then, is tied this time around. Ohio is tied, Florida is tied, and John McCain is defending ... Indiana, Georgia, even West Virginia, and suddenly he has to defend them when they used to be safe."

However, although everyone agrees that Latino voters are very young, not all can be assumed to be for the Democrats.

"The Latino vote is a young electorate that is growing, but that does not belong to a specific party," said Claudia Ortega, spokeswoman for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) organization which promotes the participation of Latin Americans in the electoral process.

"It is a very sophisticated vote that is paying attention to issues or topics that harm the family, the community and the nation," she said.

Ortega declined to give her political preferences, but she stressed the enthusiasm surrounding this election.

"We hope 9.2 million Latinos get out to vote. This would be a 20 per cent increase over 2004," she said.

Iara Corral of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI) - part of three programmes promoting electoral participation among the young - is deep into election furore.

"Our young people are very engaged in this historic moment. Our generation has gone through an education process that cultivates the idea of diversity and multiculturalism," she said.

She noted that Latinos in the US are told from little on up that it is possible to become president of the United States.

The enthusiasm was spurred on by seeing Latino Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Senator Hillary Clinton run for the Democratic nomination, and now an African-American who "can become president," she said.

Evelyn Oropeza, a young Latino journalism student, also wants to be part of this historic moment, and that is why she is working hard to register people who have just become US citizens.

"Young people are voting more and more because they want to make history. In fact, they are already making history," she stressed. (dpa)