"Make no mistake about it, the elections of 2005 and 2006 are already under way."

With that admonition Friday, Chairman Ken Mehlman dispatched Republican National Committee members with marching orders to focus on grass-roots, voter registration and targeting with the goal of bucking the six-year itch, a historic trend of congressional losses by the party of the White House incumbent.

"History is not on our side," Kelley McCullough, the RNC chief of staff, told the group. "Traditionally the party of the president loses seats in the second mid-term election. When Ronald Reagan was president, they had a net loss of 10 seats."

With no end in sight to the war in Iraq and with a president whose poll numbers have eroded since his 2004 re-election, the GOP has other challenges as it anticipates next year's contests. The party has significant advantages as well, including a so-far strong economy and low inflation. The GOP apparatus also heads toward the mid-term election with a tail wind provided by years of accumulated investment in sophisticated voter targeting and outreach.

That tactical advantage was showcased over the three days of the RNC meetings in speeches and workshops for the officials gathered in the Omni William Penn Hotel. In last year's presidential race, the Democratic Party, with the aid of third-party groups such as labor unions and so-called 527 committees, managed a major boost in voter turnout compared to 2000. The Republicans, with a low-tech/high-tech combination of grass-roots volunteers and innovative "micro-targetting" of voters, did even better.

Speaker after speaker during the RNC's summer meeting stressed the importance of nurturing that volunteer network as well as maintaining a technological edge over the Democrats. In preparation for President Bush's re-election, the RNC collected not only public records such as voter registration rolls and drivers' licenses, but they increasingly exploited the kinds of marketing and demographic information that private industry has long used to target consumers.

In widely noted remarks at a November 2004 post-election meeting of the Republican Governors Association, Mehlman said, "We did what Visa does. We acquired a lot of consumer data. Based on that, we acquired a model based not on where you live, but how you live. If you drive a Volvo and do yoga, you vote Democrat; if you drive a Lincoln or a BMW, and own a gun, you vote for George W. Bush."

Speaking with reporters Friday, Mehlman said the approach allowed the party to pinpoint its appeal to potential voters.

"Basically, what it is, is spending a lot more time IDing people, spending a lot more time figuring out what issues people care about and contacting them on the basis of those issues. Instead of just saying, 'vote for me,' It'd be about the person you've ID'd who cares about education. Somebody else might care about health care somebody else still might care [about another issue] ... it's a more granular approach to politics."

Jo Ann Davidson, the party's vice chair, said the RNC had a goal completing a still more detailed enhancement of its master voter file by June 2006.

"We must stay ahead in the technology race, and that is why we are working hard to do so," she told the committee. "We must eat, sleep and breathe voter registration. It is no longer something to focus on just in the few months before an election."

McCullough said the party would use this fall's Virginia governor's race as a laboratory to test the efficacy of the targeting data.

Responding to a question about the six-year itch syndrome, Mehlman suggested that it might not be as heavy a factor next year as in some other election cycles.

"Remember, the sixth year is usually the first year that the senators who were elected on the coattails of the president have to run for re-election" he said. "In 2000, we didn't have a lot of coattails. The fact is that in almost all of the close [Senate] races in 2000, if you think about it ... all cut for the Democrats."

Two of those close Democratic wins, for example, were in North Dakota and Nebraska, states that Bush won easily last year.

"But there is no question the second mid-term is a challenge," Mehlman said. "How do we win? By having a stronger grass roots."

The officials who met here last week face the task of spurring the laborious work of those volunteer cadres without the energizing effect of a presidential race. In a special election in Ohio's 2nd District last week, the party fell far short of that goal. While the Republican candidate held onto the seat, she managed only a narrow victory in a district that Bush carried easily. Her showing reflected a weak turnout by the district's Republican voters.

RNC officials insisted that the results were neither a referendum on the president nor an omen for next year. Rather, they argued, the race turned on more local factors including the plunging popularity of Ohio's Republican governor.

The Democratic candidate in that race was an Iraq war veteran. Asked to assess the potential impact of the war on the 2006 elections, Mehlman said, "I think people who try to make [the war] about politics make a mistake."

Dismissing the suggestion that Bush's weakened approval ratings on handling of the war would be a drag on the GOP, he said, "In 2006, the candidates whose names are on the ballot are the candidates people are going to vote on. But secondly, I think the public strongly understands the stakes in Iraq."