Republicans are generally failing to repeat a strategy this year that appeared to help them increase turnout among socially conservative voters during the last presidential election and bolstered President Bush’s effort to win re-election, the Los Angeles Times said.

In 2004, the newspaper said, Republicans put measures on ballots in 11 states that asked voters to ban same-sex marriage, and the strategy seemed to increase turnout among voters focused on conservative values and to help President Bush beat John Kerry, the Democratic candidate.

Now, however, few key battleground states will vote on propositions likely to excite those same voters, according to the story. Although there will be ballot-measure fights in several states, including some on measures to curtail affirmative action, many of those proposals will be in states where there is little question about the outcome of the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain, the newspaper said.

Of the three states — Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska — where voters are expected to decide on a measure to bar public colleges and other state agencies from using racial and ethnic preferences, only Colorado is considered a battleground state where either presidential candidate may have a significant chance of winning. (Senator McCain is favored to win Arizona and Nebraska.)

Even in Colorado, having the affirmative-action measure on the ballot may not have a significant effect on who turns out to vote. Democrats there have succeeded in qualifying measures that may bring out voters of their own, the Los Angeles Times said, and a proposal that seeks to legally define the beginning of life as the moment of conception has served to divide, rather than unite, Republicans.