The Secretary of State’s office has made two releases of voting totals which indicate the party affiliation of those whose votes have been cast. We learned yesterday that 443,611 votes were cast of which 184,982 were cast by Republicans and 159,882 were cast by Democrats.
But what does that tell us about a wave? ColoradoPols headline screams “Still no GOP ‘wave'”. I thought it might be helpful to show them where they need to go to find it.
In the last general election, 2008, the final results for early voting in Colorado showed more Democrats early voting than Republicans. The final numbers, according to Dem party’s Dan Slater were 659,278 Dems voted early, and 644,806 Republicans voted early. That works out to 36.4834 % for the Dems to 35.6825 % for the Republicans, or +.8%, or 14,472 votes for the Dems.
The 2010 numbers so far show a very different turn out. So far the Dem turnout is similar to their 2008 early voting coming in at 36.0410 %, down slightly by .4%. The Republican turn out is way up (as in wave) coming in at 41.6991 %. That number is 5.7% higher than the Dems in 2010 and an improvement from 2008 of 6.5%. That translates to a republican advantage of 25K votes so far.How this impacts races is pretty easy to see. If Independents are pretty much a wash in a race, like the US Senate race seems to indicate, and the parties are tied using a 36% Republican vs. 35% Dem model like the News9/ Denver Post poll from this weekend, when the differential is over 5%, instead of 1%, Buck wins by three points.
The Dems ace in the hole has been to call in what they contend is a superior get out the vote strategy. The OFA team of college kids has been in town to turn out the vote. The Republicans don’t have anything like that, the Dems contend, so that if the race is close, they will win. If that is true you would expect in those counties where the Dems need to pick up the slack and pile up the votes they would be shining. The statewide average is 18.2%. Here are those numbers.
Voted by 10-25 Active Registration % of turnout
Denver-D 23,306 137,202 17
Denver-R 8,367 46,553 18
Boulder -D 13,806 69,289 20
Boulder – R 7,354 34,297 21.4
Republicans in Denver and Boulder are voting in higher percentages than Dems in those counties.
How are the Republicans doing in the counties where they need to run up the vote? Here are those numbers:
Voted by 10-25 Active Registration % of turnout
El Paso – R 26,015 134,919 19.3
El Paso – D 11,828 64,192 18.4
Douglas – R 15,937 76,526 20.8
Douglas – D 6,742 33,333 20.2
Republicans in El Paso and Douglas counties are voting in higher percentages than Dems in those counties.
Picking up 6.5% in two years and outpolling the Dems by 5.7% is the wave that will carry a lot of Republicans to victory. That wave will be about 100K votes high.
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You can’t compare 2008 with 2010. Nobody trying to get serious data would compare a non-Presidential year to a Presidential election.
the first week of early voting with the entire early voting totals. Republicans have always voted in higher numbers earlier ever since Colorado started early voting.
Both parties are voting at about the same rate they were two and four years ago, but H-man persists in comparing these two snapshots with the entire early voting totals.
2008 first report early voting: 105,227 D, 105,615 R
2008 total early voting: 659,278 D, 644,806 R. That looks pretty consistent to me.
2010 first report early voting: 71,325 (36.84%) D, 81,545 (42.19%) R
2010 second report early voting:88,557 (35.38%) D, 103,437 (41.32%) R
So far if anything Republican lead is expanding during early period(+5.35 to +5.94)
Everyone keeps telling you how you cannot compare a Presidential election (2008) with a non Presidential election. You just ignore that point and keep putting up your comparisons. But your comparisons mean nothing, because mid-term elections are completely different than Presidential elections.
Compare 2010 to 2006, and show us that Republicans are trending much higher than in that last mid-term election, and we’ll take you seriously. Until then, stop just posting the same irrelevant numbers over and over again.
There’s no question that a LOT more Democrats voted in 2008 than ever before, and there’s little reason to think that the same percentage will turn out in 2010.
Furthermore, a higher number than usual of Republicans likely voted in 2008 on the West Slope because they got a late visit from John McCain. Ken Buck doesn’t generate the same level of enthusiasm as the GOP Presidential nominee, just as Bennet is in no way as exciting as Barack Obama was two years ago. Whatever happened in 2008 has ZERO correlation to what might happen in 2010.
“There’s no question that a LOT more Democrats voted in 2008 than ever before, and there’s little reason to think that the same percentage will turn out in 2010.”
Or only sometimes.
“Flip what dark giraffe bunny, boo!” means “Buck has an amazing record as a DA which would serve the state of Colorado well in the place that must not be named” in made up Republican language. Even English was made up. It’s legitimate, look it up!
It’s fun. Just read until you get bored and then make up your own sentence.
How about showing you that Republicans are voting in higher amounts in this election. I don’t see a problem and just because you don’t like the conclusion, does not mean the reasoning does not hold.
If I wanted to predict the amount of voters in total who would vote, I would look to the last mid term.
Do you have any information based on facts, not Dem dreams, that the 5%+ Republican turn out lead will not hold?
FOUR YEARS AGO EQUALS 2006.
Jesus, can I please be banned? Anything has got to be better than the stupidity here.
and then misrepresenting it as proof of an overall trend for the entire data as a whole.
It’s H-mans’ forte. If all you have is a hammer every problem starts looking like a nail. Hammer away.
to come back. That’s just how fucking dumb he is.
early voting in Rollinsville by R’s is up from 3 last election to 4 today !
Buck wins by 33 points !
we may as well all call it quits and burn those ballots for kindling, no?
no need for voting here. Buckys got it in the bag.
I fucking tried fucking yesterday. Fucking.
The Denver Post!
my efforts.
I’m going to go with the surefire methods–start calling everyone ignorant motherfuckers (actually, that one should be pretty easy for me), copying and pasting entire newspaper articles from the Post and describing oral sex in great detail.
Wish me luck.
But the rest sounds pretty good.
Despite Pols’ new invention of the penalty box, they have no intention of using it. Or maybe it’s just for conservatives or something. Kind of stupid to get us all excited about something and then not use it.
Listen mister, you can keep your sick fantasies to yourself.
since you insist on comparing this year’s early vote with 2008 data. Republicans always vote early in higher proportion than Democrats. There are a lot of reasons for this. So what you were seeing in 2008, when the early vote returns were similar between the two parties, was leading evidence of the Democratic wave (remember that?). What you’re seeing this year is a return to business as usual — which is anything but a Republican wave.
As we’ve said repeatedly, the early returns announced by the SOS don’t guarantee that there will not be a Republican wave. Our point is that it hasn’t happened yet, and that the early trends don’t show that the wave is coming. Again, maybe it will be a wave — but based on the first two sets of ballot returns, there’s no indication that this is going to happen.
Lets look at the Senate Race:
Nominee Mark Udall Bob Schaffer
Popular vote 1,230,994 990,755
Percentage 52.8% 42.5%
With your Logic at this pace Bennet wins by close to 4%
I don’t know what % of Republicans voted for Udall, Do you?
I am comparing party affiliation, not who ultimately is elected
Why’s that? Is it because Ken Buck is a sexist?
Hint: Yes. It’s because Ken Buck is a sexist.
Only 2% of Democrats are undecided. That 5% differential exactly cancels out your predicted Republican surge and means that you’ll be crying in your beer Wednesday morning.
WATCH MY MATH
Torture numbers enough and they’ll tell you anything.
I waterboarded my physics textbook the night before the final exam. My resulting ‘A’ is evidence of the success of this approach.