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October 17, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

Ritter Leads in Gubernatorial Poll; Beauprez Leads Name ID

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

The Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post have results from a statewide poll on the gubernatorial candidates.

The poll from the Post asked the straight-up question about “who would you vote for,” and Ritter surprisingly leads both Republican candidates. According to the Post, Ritter would beat Beauprez 42-36 (with 22% undecided) and would beat Holtzman 41-30 (with 29% undecided). 

The Rocky Mountain News, meanwhile, has a bigger breakdown by name ID:

More Coloradans have heard of Congressman Bob Beauprez than his two gubernatorial rivals – Republican Marc Holtzman and Democrat Bill Ritter – according to a statewide poll. But voters aren’t paying that much attention to the 2006 race yet, the poll shows…

…The poll by the Rocky Mountain News and CBS 4 shows that 80 percent of Coloradans have heard of Beauprez, almost twice the name recognition of his GOP rival, Holtzman, a former Cabinet secretary and university president who had a 44 percent recognition rate.

Sixty-three percent of voters have heard of Ritter, a Colorado native and former Denver district attorney who is the lone Democrat in the race so far. But only one in three voters has an opinion of Ritter – either favorable or unfavorable – meaning that Coloradans might know who he is but that they don’t know much about him, Weigel said.

Only one in five voters has an opinion of Holtzman, but two of three voters has an impression of Beauprez…

Holtzman’s name ID was very low earlier this summer, and we had heard that his efforts to change that — culminating with appearances in the NO on C&D ads — had worked. A 44% name ID isn’t great, but for someone like Holtzman who was starting from basically zero, it isn’t too bad.

Beauprez’s name ID of 80% is somewhat surprising, especially given that Ritter is only at 63% name ID and both are basically Denver Metro guys. Beauprez’s ID is probably higher because of TV ads from 2004.

…When the questioning was narrowed to the 192 registered Republicans who said they are likely to vote in the primary, 47 percent said they would choose Beauprez, 13 percent picked Holtzman and a chunk were undecided.

Beauprez’s support comes from the metro area, Weigel said. Elsewhere in Colorado, 69 percent of voters were undecided, and Holtzman and Beauprez were tied. Because of the smaller sample, the margin of error on the Republican race is plus or minus 7.1 percentage points.

This isn’t much of a surprise, because Holtzman doesn’t have the name ID to overcome the high level of undecideds at this point. In fact, you could make the case that Beauprez’s numbers should be higher given that he has 80% name ID. We’ve heard that polls show Beauprez with a high number of negatives among potential voters, which may account for why only 47% of people would vote for him even though he is so well-known. When you compare the poll done by the Denver Post, which has Ritter beating both Beauprez and Holtzman, it’s pretty clear that Beauprez’s negatives are outweighing his name ID advantage by a significant margin.

…The poll didn’t ask a similar question of registered Democrats, since Ritter has no announced opposition at this point.

Voters were also asked about Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald of Jefferson County, whose name keeps popping up as a possible candidate for governor. She has a 47 percent name recognition, but fewer than one in five voters have a strong impression of her.

This might be the most surprising news from the poll. Ritter has a significantly better name ID than Fitz-Gerald statewide, even though Joan has spent the last year as the vocal State Senate President. Ritter’s many years as Denver District Attorney apparently paid off, with the constant news coverage that office receives paying dividends even though he left the position in January.

Overall, the news from this poll doesn’t say a whole lot. We’ll be making line changes as soon as the last fundraising numbers come in, by the way.

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13 thoughts on “Ritter Leads in Gubernatorial Poll; Beauprez Leads Name ID”

  3. So what? This was just residual info from the Ref C poll. That’s what’s important here. voters won’t remember a thing about BB & MH food fight.

    BB’s name recognition is higher. What’s important is favs to unfavs among those who have any impression at all.

    And if Ref C wins, MH will get a big boost and be able to campaign on how TO fix the budget “problem.”

    If his campaign is smart enough to use the “I prevented the bad fix that raised taxes, now here’s the good fix without raising taxes.”

    Any Republican who is not vehemently against Ref C deserves reeducation with pliers and a blowtorch.

  4. Any Republican who is not vehemently against Ref C deserves reeducation with pliers and a blowtorch.

    I didn’t realize Guantanamo Bay prison was a Republican re-education center.

    Seriously, what happened to honest dissent?  I disagree with other Democrats all the time, and so far I have not found the need to threaten anyone.

  5. Time for ColoPols nitwits to again up Marc Holtzman’s odds of attaining the Republican nod for governor.  Didn’t you guys read the news, Marc has less name recognition than Beauprez.  And since you seem to change your rankings in inverse proportion to common logic…don’t you think you are overdue to make Holtzman’s odds just 2:1.  After all, Holtzman is your pick for the GOP candidate.  And, oh yes, he got more “positive” press from removing the President Reagan photos from his website.  That about locks up the nomination for MH don’t you think?

  6. Proverbial tortoise vs. hare.
    Andrew Romanoff and Joan Fitz-Gerald addressing groups of twenty. No press coverage, no TV no mention in brochures. Joanie and Andrew listened to advisers without the slightest bit of common sense. Of course they will have those same advisers when their first names become Former as in Former Speaker and Former Senator. Hell, Joan cannot even figure out if she can run for reelection or not.

  7. This poll gives us very little REAL information for use in next year’s election. The numbers of who will vote for who will change continually over the course of the next 8 months. Much of the events which will decide that election’s outcome are also months and months away.

    Unknowns will affect it as well:
    1. will another Dem enter the race? Who will it be?
    2. Can Beauprez and Holtzman both manage to stay out of jail, not under federal investigation, until the primary?
    3. who has the most baggage to unload during the campaign? This suitcase is not even been unlocked yet.

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