RENO -- Just a few miles from the casinos, tattoo parlors, wedding chapels and strip joints, Mitt Romney campaign volunteer Theresa Catalani has carved out a corner of the self-styled Biggest Little City in the World to register voters.

The clipboard-clutching Catalani pursues shoppers as if the presidential election will be won or lost outside this strip mall -- the Biggest Little Parking Lot in the 2012 Race for President.

"Are you registered to vote? Is your address and everything up to date?" she asks shoppers, who take it in stride that a presidential campaign is playing out here around the clock.

With the presidential campaigns all but ignoring ultra-blue California, some residents find it easy to forget that 2012 is a presidential election year. But head east on Interstate 80 and cross the border into Nevada and there's nowhere to hide from the long arm of political hustlers, a stream of attack ads, and robocalls at dinner time, TV time and even bedtime.

"I can't answer my phone anymore," said Judy Bemdure, 53, of Carson City, as she took a break from it all at the Triple-A Reno Aces' championship baseball game.

Sure, the Silver State's six electoral votes might look trivial next to California's 55, but Nevada's could be the margin of victory for Romney or President Barack Obama, especially if the big swing states such as Ohio and Florida are split between them.

An average of three Nevada polls since mid-August

Both the Romney and Obama campaigns are pouring millions of dollars into advertising blitzes and sending armies of staff members and volunteers onto phones and into the streets to contact every possible voter.

Both candidates have been in Nevada at least about once a month since the spring. Obama flew to Las Vegas during the height of last week's crisis in Libya. Romney will be back in Vegas on Friday.

Democrats hope Latinos, a population that has exploded from 19.7 percent in 2000 to 27.1 percent in 2011, will help them carry the day in the state. Republicans want those votes, too, but might also see an ace in the hole in Nevada's Mormons -- about 7 percent of the population.

Both sides say that Obama probably will win Las Vegas' Clark County, while Romney most likely will win Reno's Washoe County. So each side is striving to minimize the other's victory and maximize its own.

That's why Catalani, 32, was trying so hard to get Charles Doucette, 21, who works at a local bank branch, to fill out a voter-registration form. Too young to vote in 2008, he was eager to sign on the dotted line.

Lynda Rizzo, 67, a patient access representative at a local hospital, also registered with Catalani.

"Historically, whichever way Washoe goes, so the state goes, and so goes the nation," Catalani said.

Evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, Washoe County has been ravaged by unemployment, a drop-off in tourism dollars and a sea of underwater mortgages in this starkly beautiful high desert. When candidates come calling -- as Obama did Aug. 21, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan did Sept. 7, and Romney did Sept. 12 -- Washoe County residents expect a lot.

"We still have millions and millions unemployed -- and look at our gasoline prices," said Gilbert Gonzalez, 52, a union carpenter breaking down vendors' booths at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, where Romney had addressed a National Guard gathering a day earlier.

In recent years, Gonzalez said, he lost his construction business and store, several cars and three houses. His son was recently rejected for a student loan, and Gonzalez can barely drum up enough work to get by.

Like many Washoe County residents, he's more than a little cynical about the election and doesn't even know if he'll vote.

"The economy has not really done any better with Barack Obama, so why should we give him another four years?" he said. "How much time do you need?"

Yet, he said, if he does decide to enter the polling booth, he'll probably pick Obama over Romney, whom he calls "a cheat and a liar who doesn't pay taxes" and is on the wrong side of issues ranging from health care to Social Security to tax breaks for millionaires.

The Democratic and Republican troops on the ground are trying to battle that kind of cynicism. And they're fired up.

One of them is 20-year-old Romney campaign intern Erin Collins, born and raised in Pleasanton and now a junior at the University of Nevada, Reno, majoring in public relations.

"I actually just switched over my registration to vote in Nevada because I knew my vote would count a lot more here than it would there," she said at Romney's northern Nevada campaign headquarters, where on a recent evening volunteers were being wooed with ice cream and put to work on the phones.

Collins is confident she has found a candidate who will create jobs for people her age. Yet she acknowledges she hears "a lot of mixed responses" from voters.

"I see a lot of people who are anti-Obama, but I don't see a lot of people who are pro-Romney," she said. "People want to see more concrete plans from Romney."

A day earlier at the local Obama headquarters, Stephanie Moore, 44, a Democratic counterpart to Catalani, was being trained to register new voters. A Saratoga native who is registered as a Libertarian, Moore said she has never worked for a campaign but has believed since 2008 that Obama is "the right man for the job."

"What I hear from people a lot of times is that my vote doesn't make a difference; it's not going to affect the outcome," she said. "But if you don't want to vote for yourself, vote for a family member who needs health care or who wants to marry the person they love."

The Republican troops are trying to capture the energy of those who see Obama's first term as an unmitigated disaster -- people like Beverly Van Dusseldorp, 72, who said if the president walked through the door of her Antique Angel Wedding Chapel, "I'd punch him out."

With a schnauzer named Preacher curled at her feet, she proudly displayed an "I built my business" sticker, referring to Obama's now-famous "You didn't build that" comment about business owners benefiting from public services and infrastructure.

"You have no idea how many hours I spent building this business with my own two hands," said Van Dusseldorp, who has no patience for fellow Nevada residents whining about the lack of choice in the presidential election.

"Being in America is a blessing and it is an honor," she said. "So get your bloody self out there and vote. It just infuriates me that so many people take for granted what they have."