Several of the hotly contested Senate races are also suggestive of this emerging majority. In Colorado, for example, the high-tech Denver-Boulder area has increasingly gone Democratic and could enable Democrat Tom Strickland to upset Republican incumbent Wayne Allard.

In New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen has an excellent chance of beating conservative Republican John Sununu. A key reason is the development of the Nashua-Portsmouth high-tech corridor, whose voters, like professionals elsewhere, are beginning to prefer moderate Democrats.

North Carolina's race is tightening as Democrat Erskine Bowles tries to upset heavily favored Republican Elizabeth Dole. He's trying to build on pro-Democratic trends in North Carolina's most dynamic areas, the Research Triangle area around Raleigh and the Charlotte area in Mecklenberg County, which helped to elected North Carolina's other senator, Democrat (and presidential hopeful) John Edwards. If he can generate enough support in these areas, he will win the election.

And if Ron Kirk beats John Cornyn in Texas, or even comes close, it will show that the burgeoning minority -- particularly Hispanic -- population is shifting the state Democratic. In the 1990s, Texas' Hispanic population grew from 26 to 32 percent and is projected to continue to rise rapidly in the future. Combined with the 12 percent of Texas' population that is black, it gives the Democrats a formidable and growing base in the president's home state.

These contests show that, as America is changing -- becoming a more diverse, post-industrial society - so are its politics. And those politics favor Democrats, not Republicans. Clear signs of this change started appearing in the early 1990s, as the Republicans began to suffer divisions within their ranks and the Democrats began to win elections. The Democrats' new support has partly come from the return of some white working-class voters in the North who had deserted the party in the Reagan years; but it has chiefly come from the constituencies that loom so large in the races discussed above: professionals, women and minorities.

Professionals: Professionals are college-educated white-collar workers who produce ideas and services. They worry about the quality of their products and services, rather than simply whether it produces a profit, and tend to be socially liberal. They include doctors and nurses, software programmers, actors, teachers, engineers and fashion designers. In the 1950s, professionals made up about 7 percent of the working population, and were the most Republican of all the occupational groups. But as the American economy has changed -- as the production of ideas or services has displaced the production of things -- professionals have more than doubled to about 16 percent of the workforce. They are even more heavily represented among voters, comprising about a fifth of the national electorate and even more than that in some Northeastern and far Western states. And a majority of them have become Democrats. In the last four presidential elections, they backed Democrats over Republicans by an average of 52 to 40 percent.

Women: Women used to vote more Republican than men. But in 1964, a pro-Democratic gender gap first appeared; in 1980, it widened, and in subsequent elections, women not only voted more Democratic than men, but they began to vote Democratic in absolute terms. What made the difference was the entrance of women into the workforce and the Republican identification with the religious right's view of women and the family. Democrats are particularly strong among working, single and highly educated women, all of whom are growing proportions of women voters.

Minorities: Blacks did not always support Democrats. As late as 1960, a Republican presidential candidate could get a third of the black vote. But after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964, blacks abandoned the Republicans, and now support Democrats by 9-1 margins. Hispanics -- except for Cubans -- Japanese-Americans and Filipinos had been Democrats since the New Deal and have remained so. But in the '90s, Chinese-Americans, turned off by Republican opposition to immigration, also began voting Democratic. In 1972, the combined minority vote made up about 10 percent of the electorate. But in 2000, minorities made up almost a fifth of the vote and voted 75 percent Democratic overall. And by 2010, they could make up as much as a quarter of the electorate.

The support of professionals, women and minorities has transformed the Democratic electorate. The older New Deal Democrats used to be the party of Southern whites, urban ethnics and Midwestern blue-collar workers. Now the Democrats are the party of teachers, nurses and janitors.

But the change in the Democrats doesn't end with its constituents. The New Deal Democrats used to be based primarily in the deep South and in the urban North; the new Democratic Party's greatest strength is in post-industrial metropolitan areas, or "ideopolises." These new communities were spawned by the transition to post-industrial capitalism. They specialize in the production of ideas and services. Their workforces are dominated by professionals and by lower-level service workers, many of whom are minorities.

Many older industrial cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia have become ideopolises. In 1983, Los Angeles had three times as many aerospace workers as workers in the movie industry. By 2000, the proportions were exactly reversed. Many of these areas, like Silicon Valley in California and Bergen County in New Jersey, used to be solidly Republican, but have become Democratic. They are concentrated in the Northeast, upper Midwest and Far West, but they are also found in North Carolina's Research Triangle, Orlando's entertainment and computer service complex, and in the Denver-Boulder area. In 2000, Gore won these areas of the country by 55 to 41 percent.

In that election, ideopolis counties accounted for 44 percent of the electorate. And they are growing much faster than the non-ideopolis counties in rural areas or in areas centered around towns like Muncie, Ind., or Charleston, W.V. Between 1990 and 2000, ideopolis counties grew by an average of over 22 percent, compared to 10 percent for the average non-ideopolis county. And they start from a larger population base -- an average of 475,000 compared to 54,000 for the average non-ideopolis county. The Republicans may capture West Virginia, but the Democrats will likely have a firm hold not only on California, New York and Illinois, but also on Florida, Colorado and even, perhaps, Texas.

Democratic prospects could change, of course, if the U.S. goes to war -- and if war and international turmoil last a decade, the Democratic majority could be put on hold. In the wake of Democratic divisions over the Vietnam War, voters came to see Republicans as the party of national security. Sept. 11 -- and Bush's initial success in uprooting the Taliban in Afghanistan -- revived that perception and has contributed to Bush and the Republican Party's popularity. Even now, the public's preoccupation with national security will probably limit the Democrats' gains in the 2002 elections. If turmoil were to continue and, especially, escalate, then the issues that favor Democrats would be of less importance, at least for a time.

In 1969, after all, Kevin Phillips predicted an "emerging Republican majority." But Phillips couldn't foresee that Watergate would delay the emergence of a Republican majority by six years. The same thing could happen in the coming decade. But, eventually, the party that best reflects the new post-industrial society of the 21st century should prevail. And at this point, that party is the Democrats.

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