December 14, 2009 09:26 PM UTC

Colorado Democrats Finally Outregister GOP

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• by: Colorado Pols

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.