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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(R) Jeff Hurd
(D) Adam Frisch
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
52%↑
48%↓
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
November 13, 2018 10:43 AM UTC
37 Comments
"Polis’ margin of victory over Republican Walker Stapleton has only risen as more ballots are counted".
You mean the used-to-be incompetent Colorado Dimocrats have finally learned how to improve their vote totals?
Moddy should not have poked the bear.
Actually Moddy accused us of counting chickens, not poking bears, too soon.
Not enough. Colorado can do better.
"California Democrats have regained a veto-proof two-thirds majority in the state legislature, thanks to late ballots awarding them victories in several key races."
There is no "good" GOP. It needs to die.
There is no point in a veto proof majorit y when your party holds the governorship. California Dems are just being hogs!
Would agree in principle, but they need 2/3 majority to approve budgets in CA.
Good information, unnamed.
Yeah. Fucked up. Isn't it?
California has its own maddening TABOR-like eccentricities, make no mistake.
Some of them brought to you by…Dougie Bruce.
Bruce thought California's budget restrictions were too lax – so he came here and foisted TABOR on us.
Who do the Colorado Democrats know with the ability to throw $20-25 million into a Senate race? I'm figuring we've got a successful model for winning, why tamper with it?
Well, if you donate $25 million, John, I'll put my net worth in, bringin g us up to $23 million. Duke can matchbthat and well have $21 million.
Sigh.
😉 sure…I'll help.
Also Jason Crow won by more than 11 percent against Mike Coffman, which is actually better than Scott Tipton did over Diane Mitsch Bush. CD-6 is in Dem control until the next redistricting for sure.
Sure seems like when the next redistricting is done, Colorado will have 8 representatives: 4 of which will be solid D (Denver, Boulder, and (2) Denver suburbs), 2 solid R, (Colo. Springs and Eastern Plains), and 2 toss ups (some combination of mountains/Western slope, Southern Colo. and Northern Colo.)
The population of Colorado is 5.68 million, which means 8 districts would each have about 710K people. This won't change too much by 2020 years, but it is interesting to note the increasing dominance of urban population areas.
Due to front range growth, it will be hard to create counties with more than marginal rural presence, maybe Weld and Grand Junction-Pueblo have enough population to anchor a district – to half anyway. (With North metro growth, Weld is increasingly urban/suburban anyway.)
Looking at county populations, Denver, El Paso, Arapaho, Jefferson+ and Adams+ will be their own districts. The next 2 districts will also be some combination of two counties plus filler. Do you keep Boulder with Larimer and have Weld reach South, or do you combine Larimer & Weld, and have Boulder reach West?
Here are the biggest counties by population; below Mesa county you have little more than filler for other districts:
704,621 Denver
699,232 El Paso
643,052 Arapahoe
574,613 Jefferson
503,167 Adams
343,976 Larimer
335,299 Douglas
322,514 Boulder
304,633 Weld
166,475 Pueblo
151,616 Mesa
68,341 Broomfield
59,118 Garfield
55,589 La Plata
54,772 Eagle
47,559 Fremont
41,784 Montrose
30,585 Summit
30,568 Delta
28,192 Morgan
26,140 Montezuma
25,642 Elbert
25,220 Routt
24,646 Teller
21,896 Logan
19,638 Chaffee
The short of it is, the new, 8th district has to be urban/suburban, meaning that rural Colorado will have voting influence in only a couple districts, and probably a minority presence within each of those.
The Republican geographic-demography that succeeded for Trump nationally has collapsed in Colorado. That goes a long way to explaining why the Democrats swept state-wide seats, and gained the trifecta.
These same trends exist to a greater or lesser extend in other Western states like Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Arizona. Texas is also increasingly urban. (TX will gain two seats after 2020, which will also have to be urban-suburban.)
Colorado started trending blue in 2013, with the passage of HB1303 (thanks, Sen Giron and Reps Hullinghorst and Pabon!) when mail ballots came in. Even though Gessler, Williams, and all of the R Sec States pissed and moaned about how all mail elections would bring on rampant voter fraud, it turns out that Republicans love mail in ballots, too.
Nevertheless, more voters and easier voting means more Democrats voting – hence blue elections.
We in the red counties are a slightly lighter shade of red now (smaller R margins) with more young people, Latinos, and refugees becoming citizens and voting. Unpopularity of Trump helped fade that red hue, too.
Unfortunately for us, it meant that Democrats on the eastern plains helped assure the statewide candidates' victories; however, we could not elect some very worthy local legislative candidates like McCall and Gustafson. We're stuck with Sonnenberg, Decker, and the like out here in the Beets and the Wheats.
Getting an 8th seat is good news, though. I think they (the new redistricting commission) should carve off parts of CD3 and CD4 for the 8th seat. Both are godawful huge and hard for low-dollar candidates to compete in.
Maybe dilute CD5 with some collitch libruls and front-range LBGTQ -proud folks so that they don't keep electing embarrassments like Lamborn.
Grab a glass of wine, and play. I wish there was a button to add an additional seat.
7 Colorado districts compactly following county boundaries.
It'll be interesting to see where Colorado poaches that 8th seat from. Which state is losing the most people? Calfornia?
By percentage, according to Wikipedia, West Virginia is losing the most people with a drop of 2.01% since 2010. The only other two states losing population, Vermont and Illinois, are losing by less than 1%.
We are getting it from Minnesota. Often the math is not clear about where a seat is "came from", but in this case we passed Minnesota in population in the last decade and Minnesota is losing one seat.
Under most population projections New York is losing two seats. California is gaining one (all the talk of California losing population is Republican wishful thinking).
Point me to a population projection for 2020 and I can put the numbers in my House Seat Spreadsheet. The math is not hard using a spreadsheet. The problem is the accuracy of the population projections.
Thanks, DEN. I know it's not usually clear. Committees start with a blank map and carve and chisel and gerrymander until there are 425 districts approximately equal in population.
435 seats. And the math is totally fair and has been used since 1940.
The states are all assigned one seat. Then the formula is used to figure out which state is most misrepresented by this, the state with the highest ratio of population to representation. So California gets the 51st seat. Then do that ratio again and see which state gets seat 52. Repeat until all 435 seats are assigned.
The only reason where a seat came from or went to is not clear is because you have to play alternate history games. “What if Texas did not grow so fast. Who kept a seat then?” Doing that brings up assumptions about why population is growing or not in different places. So… complex.
Why 435? Well because it is not even so no deadlocks. Also it is evenly divided by 3 for easy math when a 2/3 majority is needed and an accident of history because that is where Congress stopped adding seats.
The assigning of seats is 100% fair. The problem comes afterwards when the states figure out how to carve up their own population into districts. Weirdly enough some states used to sidestep this by electing all their representatives at large. Nothing in the constitution says anything about districts. States just have to avoid violating “one man, one vote” too badly.
Oops, Of course, it's 435. I had a little brain hiccup there.
Nothing in the Constitution, but IIRC Federal law requires single-member districts now. Like the limit of 435, at-large prohibitions are strictly arbitrary (or not-so-arbitrary) Congressional decisions.
You are correct. I had thought the practice was just gradually abandoned, but apparently it was repealed by congress in 1967.
A bit disappointing to me since I think it would be a useful experiment for some states to try proportional representation instead of districts. Ah well.
The New York Time had a fascinating article discussing this issue. They suggested a revamped formula of simply the cube root of a country's population.
I think Larimer and Weld would be a good combination.
I kind of agree. That accepts that you'll be splitting rural Eastern plains, and also the two University towns. I think it makes some sense to avoid a huge, sprawling district, but it dilutes rural even more; maybe you can't avoid it.
So, Boulder adds Broomfield and what? You'd have to split Jefferson or Adams. Or else Adams adds Broomfield…
See what I mean about how you rotate the donut?
Diluting the rural counties by reapportionment doesn't hurt my feelings one bit. The hinterlands ran the statehouse for a very long time and treated Denver (the only "big city”; then), like a red-headed stepchild.
I am with you on that, skinny. I get very tired of listening to the bellyaching of a bunch of entitled ranchers and farmers.
I think it would be great if we could gerrymander Boulder into CD3…That would be fun.
It would, indeed, Duke. Those ranchers and farmers would pitch a fit and fall in it if they had to make deals with the "Boulder Libruls" to get anything done.
We need a redistricting plan that gerrymanders Doug Lamborn into oblivion.
Good catch.
The notable thing about the numbers is how much better Polis did relative to Stapleton than candidates in other races where basic partisan inclination matters more and most voters know less about the candidates.
About 3% of voters could stomach a generic R but not Walker Stapleton.