President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 04, 2011 02:12 AM UTC
12 Comments
Turnout looks to be around 94-96k, I’m told we can expect to see initial results around 7:15.
The rumor mill says Romer and Hancock in the runoff, I think mostly triggered by the fundraising numbers from the past week which are simply eye popping for Hancock.
Anyone have guesses on Council races? There have been no numbers on any of the District races and only vague at best for the at-Large race.
I expected Downey and Johnson to be close together, but had no clue Sarah McCarthy would be doing better than both of them. So it looks like Deb and Tom are battling just to get into the run-off:
McCarthy 33.12%
Johnson 28.93%
Downey 27.73%
only 632 votes between Johnson and Downey, and still about 30% to count is Ben Gelt is right about the total number
As was pretty much everyone! Most experts (both in the world and in the paper) were predicting about 100k and as little as 90k at the end of last week.
The final, unofficial, total is 112,914 or 38% which I’m confident will be a raw (and percentage?) turnout record for a Denver municipal election.
(PDF) http://www.denvergov.org/Porta…
(LINK) http://www.denvergov.org/elect…
I also have a slight disagreement regarding biggest upset. I’d say Chris Herndon besting Martinez is the biggest one on the board.
Martinez had all the major endorsements and support (like Downey) and was the presumptive favorite from early on. It was a great campaign, both sides worked hard and the result is fairly decisive. (Full disclosure, regular readers know I have been working with Herndon).
Here are the unofficial final results:
Councilmember 11:
Votes % of Votes
Chris Herndon 5,572 52.72%
Chris Martinez 4,923 46.58%
Write-In 75 0.71%
Total Votes
Under Votes
Over Votes 10,570
1,549
20
In fact, part of what makes me say this is the biggest upset is the margin. While 649 may not seem like a big vote difference consider the margins of past open seat winners.
In 2003 Marcia Johnson beat Marcus Pachner in the runoff by 46 votes. Forty. Six.
That same year Rosemary Rodriguez beat Don Sandoval by 284 votes. Another runoff, but frankly you show me another one on one open seat.
In 2007 Paul Lopez won his runoff by 791 votes. Obviously a larger number but not substantially so.
Also in 2007, Carla Madison won her runoff by just 179 votes after getting into the bonus round by virtue of a 73 vote advantage over third place finisher Darrel Watson in the general.
Again, I acknowledge all these examples are runoffs but I simply can’t find another example of an open seat with only two candidates. Runoffs are the best comparison anyway because it’s also a one on one situation.
Beyond Chris and Tom, I think the big surprise is actually Debbie Ortega. Not so much for winning, but for the number of votes. As my mother said when I spoke with her after most of the numbers were in: “That’s more than Cathy Reynolds used to get!”.
Debbie was surpassed only by Dennis Gallagher in total votes and blew the field out of the water. Second place finisher Robin Kniech had 15,000 fewer votes than Debbie – but under 7,000 more votes than Josh Davies and 4,000 more than third place finisher Rich Gonzalez. Debbie ran away with this race and hid.
All in all an interesting night, obviously we’ll have Romer vs. Hancock as the main card and several solid matchups on the undercard. Runoffs in 1, 5 and 8 and for Clerk and Recorder mean that five of the eight open positions we had this morning remain that way. A hearty congratulations to Chris Herndon, Debbie Ortega and Robin Kniech (and Dennis Gallagher, he did get the most votes of anyone in the city after all!) on their election night victories!
According to the election archive at DenverGov.org, 114,492 people voted in the municipal election held on May 6,2003, or 46.2% of the 244,398 active voters.
Between Hick’s goofy ads Don Mares using old-school GOTV efforts (but not extensively enough), the over-all interest level was higher.
This election just did not have the same feeling. I think it might have been too many top-tier candidates in the mayor’s race. The general public had too many choices and could not easily make a snap decision so they ignored it altogether.
There wasn’t enough “air” so to speak for the top tier candidates to get their messages out this time.
A couple of things from 03 that stick out for me were how impressed I was with Penfield Tate and wished he had jumped into the race earlier so he could have gained more traction. I also remember how miffed Sue Casey seemed at how some beer pub owner with silly TV ads would be more attractive to Denver voters than a seasoned political pro such as herself.
Well, maybe if she had not quit immediately after being elected to something the last time, she have had more support!
The number of under votes is higher than the number of votes collected by the front runner.
Tells me none of the candidates really stood out to the voters, and possibly many voters did not even know who any of them were.
Kudos to Sarah. She apparently had something going on in her campaign. Both Downey and Johnson were favored over her.
Anecdotaly, I can tell you a lot of people voting for Davies wound up going “single shot”. Given your point and the way the race played out, it seems that was a common theme at-Large.
I just received an email sent out by Tom Downey to his supporters and I would like to quote a piece of it…
“I called Debra Johnson earlier this morning to let her know that I am endorsing her for the Run-Off on June 7th. She lives in Denver and took second place last night. I got to know her on the campaign trail and she is an impressive woman. She is smart, well spoken, has tremendous experience and she works as hard as anyone I know. I hope that you would consider voting for her.”
Kudos to Tom for proving himself to be a gentleman. Here is a man that knows the office and the candidates and his endorsement should not be taken lightly.
I wonder who Romer would rather face? I could be wrong, but I can’t imagine many Mejia or Linkhart supporters going over to Romer. Hancock strikes me as the more formidable opponent.
I do not speak for any other Mejia supporter, but personally while I will not vote for Romer I am not enthusiastic about Hancock. I do not know if I will vote in the mayoral runoff.
If I had been given a preferential ballot I would have picked
Theresa Spahn
James Mejia
Doug Linkhart
Carol Boigon
Michael Hancock
Chris Romer
I think Hancock is a better choice than Romer, but only by a very little bit. Two bad choices to pick from.