CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 31, 2011 09:20 AM UTC
27 Comments
Denver mayor? I’m guessing so… but there are probably other local elections going on in Colorado.
I saw the link, so yeah, it is Denver mayor.
Where is the dairy embedded poll on Hancock v Romer?
Is CPs to chicken to put up a poll …. do they fear their favored candidate will be shown to be trailing?
Come on bloggers, who is the favored candidate … romer or Hancock?
I put this up and I do not think CP or anything we say will change the race.
Libby’s talking about something totally different. The “Dairy Poll.” You know, milk or cheese?
Missed it, Sorry Lib
Boy, do you have egg on your face.
Libby does have a point. It’s interesting to watch Pols squirm on this. The Pols brand is failing big-time in this mayoral race, based on polling numbers. This could hit ProgessNow’s bottom line hard if corporate political dollars decide to go elsewhere in future elections because of Pols’ inability to help deliver the mayor’s seat to Wall Street. Pols’ best hope is that the low turnout breaks heavily in Romer’s favor.
on this planet…
This was predictable. Negative campaigning suppresses turnout. Have you guys not learned this yet?
Do you have some sort of real data on this?
negative campaigning in the general, and so far the turnout in the runoff is exceeding the return rate for the first round, it’s hard to see how Nancy’s point applies.
Negative campaign normally increases turn out on both sides because both sides have a rallying cry.
N/T
Most people are too busy with their families, their homes, their work, etc. to give a shit about politics anyway. We’re so in the weeds we forget that.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~c030111/…
I tend to read the research to say that policy negative attacks improve turnout and that personal negative attacks decrease turnout, but the data is unclear.
It is also unclear whether the public would view the anti-hancock ads as policy or personal (for instance, are his creationist views viewed through a policy or personal lens).
For me I see them as policy and therefore I am view them as fair game, whereas others may see them as personal and therefore unfair.
But it all may be moot because the data is mixed on whether negative campaigning works (same data) although I tend to believe it works if it is done “right.”
One thing the advertising world understands are trends. Clearly they would not continue to use negative advertising if it did not work. It flips voters, keeps voters home and turns out voters who may rally against something like… oh teaching kids people rode dinosaur to work 6,000 years ago.
This race has been calm, think back to Bennet vs Buck or Obama vs McCain.
Interesting. The study was done in 2007. I wonder who their sample was. The same folks who say they don’t care to vote may be the same ones who say they don’t want to answer survey questions. Just a hunch. The data they used was based on a 1999 study, also. A lot has changed in 12 years. I do appreciate it, though.
For all you poli-sci academic nerds out there — please do more studies on the effects of negative campaigning on political involvement and turn-out at the polls. Thanks.
your contentions, Nancy? Negative ads being one factor among many you will always be able to find examples of the candidate with the more negative ads losing. In general, though, studies show negative ads have worked remarkably well over time and many campaigns.
I do think, on balance, negative ads tend to depress voter turnout, and lots of studies show that.
You say they “work remarkably well.” I agree, but that doesn’t dispute Nancy’s point.
Overall, let’s say that a negative campaign reduces voter turnout 20 percent. But if it drops candidate A, the target of the ads, by 25 percent and candidate B, the beneficiary, by 15 percent, then, the never equal other factors being equal, they do depress turnout but they are also effective in electing (or defeating) candidates.
They do?
Studies are, at best, mixed, and most of the studies that show suppressed turnout are older than one that show the opposite. Can we conclude that negative ads used to have that effect until everyone became accustomed to them? Maybe.
Check out this more recent study that shows negative ads actually stimulate voter participation:
Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect. by P. Freedman & K. Goldstein in The Journal of Politics, 2002, 64(3), pp721-740.
The thing is, elections don’t happen in vacuums. There are usually a multitude of strong factors affecting turnout — everything from the attractiveness of candidates to the weather on election day to whether voters feel content or not.
Perhaps a good control for this year’s mayoral race will be the 2003 Hickenlooper win. Open seat, three strong candidates, roughly equal amount of money raised all around, but that election was notable for a near utter lack of negative advertising. So when all is said and done, the 2003 turnout and the 2011 turnout could be an interesting comparison.
Some differences: the all-mail ballot, which by many indications (contrary to common sense) can drive down turnout. Whether it’s a big factor or not, people sure are talking a lot this year about voter fatigue following last fall’s election, and that wasn’t a factor following the relatively quiet 2002 election.
Comparing turnout isn’t strictly apples-to-apples, because the rules for who is considered “active” and who isn’t have changed since then, but it’s interesting to note that the general election turnout was almost identical this year to the turnout in 2003.
(Which is one reason I’d take exception to Dem’s headline on this diary — the 2003 election wasn’t considered “abysmal,” but rather one that engaged the city, and turnout this year is on track to being almost exactly the same. You have to go back 20-30 years to find markedly higher turnout in Denver municipal elections, and when that’s the case, maybe it’s not voter apathy but other factors leading to the different numbers.)
and good background info, RG. I am not talking about measurable effects within the same voting cycle. I am talking about very long term. As I have said before, I ran into people in 08 that were disgusted with the Musgrave-Paccione commercials many years before, who said they hadn’t voted since. People also still call politicians “crooks”, a word that was used to describe Nixon (mainly) during the seventies! Are there studies on long-term effects of negative advertising, or are these just from one election cycle to the next?
Negative campaigning is one factor, but there are other factors as well. It’s not simple, but I believe it does have a strong effect. To Deminator, I don’t have a study to quote. If I find one, I will post it here. My belief is anecdotal — based on thirty years of going door-to-door with candidates in two states. People say they hate negative campaigning, and when they give an excuse for being (what we used to call lazy) intermittent voters, that is the first thing they tell us.
Incidentally, in the Obama campaign, we also heard a lot of, “I never voted before because it is always one rich, middle-aged white guy against another rich, middle-aged white guy. Why the hell should I care which one wins? Neither cares about me.” We heard this even in Arapahoe County, land of Tom Tancredo and Mike Coffman. The Obama turn-out was relatively high because everyone who was not a rich, middle-aged, white guy seemed to think he might be different — women, immigrants, young people, old people, people of color, etc. I have to think Hancock has benefitted a little from this mindset.
It is certainly possible I may have heard this more than a white man would. I doubt many potential voters would say this to a white guy’s face. My takeaway — hire canvassers and campaign marketers who are not white guys — they may not get it, at all. Just sayin’.
This is just the beginning of the service centers and we are coming off a holiday weekend.
I suspect the return rate will pick up sharply now that the drop-off locations are open.
http://www.denvergov.org/elect…
Mail Voter Statistics – Mail Ballots Processed
Total Mail Ballots Issued 300,053
Voted Mail Ballots Returned and Verified: 29,925
Voted Mail Ballots Returned and Rejected: 628
Total Voted Mail Ballots Returned to Elections Division 30,553
Percentage of Mail Ballots Returned 10.18%
Unvoted Mail Ballots Returned “Undeliverable” by USPS 13,370
Total Mail Ballots Returned to Elections Division 43,923
Total Outstanding Unreturned Mail Ballots 256,130
Today’s returns won’t be reported until tomorrow, and the Memorial Day holiday got in the way of reporting Friday’s sooner.