THE polls seem to indicate that Republican candidate Mitt Romney is going to lose his bid to become president of the United States. The former Massachusetts governor and his running mate, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, are apparently facing an uphill battle in the so-called swing states they will need to win in order to claim victory.

Of course polls aren’t elections, and much could change between now and Nov. 6. Lots of attention will be focused on the first of three presidential debates, scheduled for this week at the University of Denver. But the fact is voters in many states are already going to the polls under early voting, possible in as many as 30 states. The election is under way.

If the Romney-Ryan ticket fails, and President Obama is re-elected despite record high deficits and unemployment, the reason may well be found in the changing demographics of the United States. We are in the gradual but inexorable process of changing from a predominantly white, European country to a more diverse nation, what Maria Hinojosa said in her introduction to a PBS special she hosted last month is “the largest demographic change in history.”

That special, “America by the Numbers,” drew its material from the recent release of data from the 2010 census and projections derived from those trends. To make sense of the numbers, they talked with social trend tracker Guy Garcia, described as an expert on “the new American mainstream.”

“The new mainstream,” he said, “is a combination of great demographic changes, explosions in the populations of African Americans, Asians, Latinos – even to a certain extent women, young people, and LGBTs. A hundred and ten million African Americans, Asians and Hispanics have buying power that exceeds $2 trillion. Today already, 1 in 3 Americans is multicultural,” Garcia says. “When you look at the population under 18, it’s already close to a 1 to 1 ratio.” By 2042, demographers project that we will be a multicultural majority nation.

That’s 30 years away. How will all of this affect our election this year? As the demographics change, so does our electoral map, especially as the share of white voters continues to shrink. It used to be that this idea of the new America was happening in urban places, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Chicago. But, Garcia says, “it’s happening everywhere. In fact, most of the steepest growth of multicultural populations in the 2010 census was in places like Arkansas, Iowa, and Georgia.”

There are those who feel Romney could have helped his chances by selecting a minority running mate, Marco Rubio, say, or even Condoleezza Rice. The Republican ticket this year may well be the last major party team of white, male presidential aspirants.

In 2008, Obama carried 80 percent of all non-white voters, and the share of these voters has grown in every state. “Political scientists forecast that in 2012, Obama could win with just 38 percent of the white vote,” says America by the Numbers host Hinojosa, herself an example of our country’s changing demographics.