CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — If President Barack Obama wins this swing-voting state, and a second term as president, voters like Paula Burky will probably be the reason.

“He understands women,” said Burky, a Westminster resident who last month decided to vote for Obama.

Both the Democratic president and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, see women — specifically suburbanites from their 30s to their 50s — as critical to victory in Colorado as well as in other hard-fought places like Virginia and Nevada where polls also show close contests. That means this group of voters may also hold the key to winning the White House.

The state of the campaign in the sprawling Denver region — modest neighborhoods and upscale subdivisions near the city give way to retail complexes, industrial parks and front-range ranches at the outskirts — illustrates how the fight is playing out across the nation, and how both candidates are seeking to woo these female voters in different ways.

Obama has stirred passions among Colorado women by stoking fears about abortion rights, spending the past few weeks sharply criticizing Romney in ads for proposing to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and opposing the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Romney, in turn, has paid for mail and automated calls in Colorado decrying Obama’s handling of the sluggish economy’s effect on women.

Just over 100 days until the election, polls in Colorado show a close race, though it’s unclear how the electorate’s psyche will be impacted by last week’s shooting massacre at a suburban Denver movie complex and a summer wildfire season that has scorched countless homes and businesses.

For now at least, Obama has had the edge over female voters nationally and he is focusing on a particularly promising subset: collegeeducated women. Fifty-five percent of college-educated women preferred Obama in a June Associated Press-GfK poll, while 40 percent preferred Romney.

Women with college degrees make up 27 percent of Colorado voters, according to exit polls from the 2008 election, higher than the national average of 23 percent. That puts Colorado in league with other prime Romney-Obama targets, Virginia and New Hampshire.