Denver Post columnist Fred Brown writes:
Despite their president’s many problems, despite the angry town hall meetings, the poisonous partisanship in Congress, the Tea Party movement and the “birther” billboards, Democrats continue to gain numbers in Colorado.
Since August, in fact – the month of those town hall near-riots – Colorado Democrats have managed to gain slightly each month. There are currently about 10,000 more of them than Republicans.
That’s not much of an edge, only a fraction of a percentage point. In raw numbers, Colorado remains incredibly evenly divided. Each of the two major parties has slightly more than 1 million registered voters, and there are about the same number of unaffiliated voters.
In such an evenly split political environment, candidates are wise to avoid the “wedge” issues. Strong positions on abortion, immigration, guns and gay marriage might fire up the fervid bases, right and left, but they turn off the moderate middle.
The GOP’s leading gubernatorial candidate, Scott McInnis, has disappointed some of the fringier Republicans by already shying away from those divisive issues, but he’s smart to do so…
Well, as we said recently, Fred Brown (who we respect as one of the more experienced political journalists in the state) has been pushing this “GOP turned moderate” line Pollyannishly as a result of it being pushed on him by Dick Wadhams or one of his surrogates–Brown has obviously not read the “Platform for Prosperity’s” illegal immigrant and abortion planks, or McInnis’ declarations that he opposes gay marriage and is “100% pro-life,” or any number of other forced deviations from the message. We certainly get why a lot of Republicans would like what Brown is asserting to be true, though, because
Long range, the Democrats have some reason to be more optimistic. At the November 2006 elections, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in Colorado by more than 165,000 registered voters. By Election Day in November 2008, that margin had slipped to just 9,000 more Republicans than Democrats.
And today – in fact, for the past several months – Democrats have turned that around. They are now ahead of Republicans by between 9,000 and 10,000 registered voters, a trend that has shown tiny increases in the spread beginning in August. [Pols emphasis]
Brown concludes with a warning about “active” voters, a fair point given where the apathy this coming election is liable to be prevalent. Democrats do have the challenge of motivating their base of support in an off year, but the hard numbers show whose side the historic shift in the state’s electoral makeup has favored–and who remains in a state of decline.
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…I predict DickWad Hams and his Repub Cabal will immediately spin this as a vicious plot to get illegal immigrants registered to vote, and then rickey follow-on logic that we need to crack down on ACORN and any other voter organization that dared to register anyone Dem.
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your press releases…
Democrats have a contested primary coming up, whereas Republicans do not.
and Penry until a few weeks ago.
Aside from Penry, nobody knows who those guys are. The perception might be that being a Democrat will increase their vote’s value. Just throwing it out there.
on the Republican side (Buck and Frazier, not to mention Tidwell!, have been campaigning since last winter, and both Penry and McInnis were hitting it hard all summer), so voters who wanted to make a difference in a primary would have had a clear choice until very recently. Democrats have been gaining a registration edge since August, and Republicans have had the more competitive primary contests until at least November, when Penry dropped out. Since Romanoff is running a stealth campaign, they probably still do.
Also, when was the last time that Democrats outnumbered Republicans as far as registered voters go?
The Republican brand has been poisoned by eight years of stunning failure, and the Tea Party nuts and baldly obstructionist Republicans in Congress are making opposition to the Democratic agenda look like what it is, childish and beside the point.
We get lost in the sound and fury of daily news and can get the idea it’s a toss up or Democrats are coming up short, when in fact it’s just a lot of noise. Voters have been trending Democratic for a long time and there’s no reason they’re going to stop when Republicans are making asses of themselves.
The last time D’s outnumbered R’s in Colorado? Not any time in the last 40 years. Maybe in the Johnson administration, when D’s held a big advantage nationwide, but not since then.
I think that the Republicans are confusing a rise in anger from within the Republican party for real enthusiasm from voters about their ideas. These numbers totally refute the notion that voters are embracing tea party ideologies.
There is real, unfocused anger out there — it’d be crazy if there weren’t on the tail of the worst recession in modern memory — and let’s not forget that two out of three Colorado voters are NOT Democrats. But Democrats have done pretty good the last three elections with a less favorable electorate by navigating a moderate, pragmatist, non-shrill path.
After all the townhall meetings in August, the electorate is still (slowly) turning toward the Democrats. I believe the Democratic Party is the only one of the two parties that is willing to consider objective facts and address issues.
Last week a friend of mine (who is still a registered Republican but is wavering) put it this way: “Let’s say it is snowing today (it was snowing the day he told me this). However, Republican ideology says that it does not snow on Mondays. Since ideology says that it does not snow on Mondays then it does not snow on Mondays. Thus, all the white stuff on the ground today is not really there. In today’s Colorado Republican Party (the national GOP too) ideology trumps reality and facts.”
The Republicans are loosing because they absolutely refuse to deal with objective facts and reality. When Republicans have to commit acts of self deception, they are on their way to oblivion.
Question is: Is the Democratic Party establishment in Colorado entirely aware of this shift?
Oh, yes, they see the numbers. But how many Democrats, starting w/ Bill Ritter, are still of the opinion that the way to win is to mimic the Republican Party–sort of Republicans Lite–when in fact (a) an influx of people from other states, (b) the economic crisis of 2007-, and (c) evolving issues related to the environment, health care, economic competitiveness…the list goes on…towards solutions much, much more in line with Democrats elsewhere in the country, notably in California and the Northeast.
Having been around since the year dot is all well and good over drinks, but it can also prevent people from perceiving change. I didn’t see the Colorado establishment jump onto the Obama bandwagon, to cite one example, whereas I saw lots and lots of people jamming party caucuses on the county level, many of them there for the first time. Many of those Obamites have gone back to earning a living, but they are still out there, enrolled, registered, ready for something new, not the same-old, tired-old that, I’m afraid, is being served up by some established Democratic Party leaders.
Exactly. So many leading Democrats were strong Clinton backers and missed what was happening with Obama and voter mood. Luckily, noted education reformer and big-city political veteran Michael Bennet was an early and strong Obama supporter. Good thing he’s in a position to keep on innovating even in the face of the some tired, established Democratic Party leaders.
As a resident of Colorado for the past 30 years, I’m pretty sure few, if any of us, look to California and/or the NE for solutions. California, in particular is more of a cautionary tale of what not to do.
And the only radicalization I’ve observed in Colorado is on the right.
But you’re probably right about the Obamites to some degree (I was among many first timers at our caucus and 2/3rds went for Obama that night).
I do believe Ritter is being too cautious on the topic of fixing the constitutional mess. Perhaps some firebrand wil step up and get the Dem base excited. JO?
…but people from CA and elsewhere moving into the state and registering here bring a different perspective. Not at all the same as saying that CA is a model how how to go. BUT, the issues in CA may have a good deal less to do with political philosophy and much more to do with evolution of the American economy. CA has long been ahead of the rest of the country in many respects (by no means all), which could be damn sobering.
What was the Unaffiliated count?
“Remarkable!”
Never thought I’d ever hear that news in Colorado.