Colorado Sen. Mark Udall could benefit significantly from his state's 100 percent vote-by-mail.
Current Colorado polling has Democrats narrowly
leading the governor's race, and narrowly
trailing the Senate race. Now pollsters have traditionally undercounted the Democratic vote in Colorado, in large part because of the difficulty in polling the state's large Latino population. For example, the polling aggregate had President Barack Obama winning the state in 2012 by a 2-point 49-47 margin. He won it comfortably by over five points.
That, in itself, doesn't mean current Colorado polling is understating Democratic support. If the undercount is due to Latino voters, and Latino voters don't turn out this year, then it would have little effect on the numbers. But there's something else at play that suggests that pollsters are driving blind—Colorado is now a 100 percent vote-by-mail state. That means that people don't have to drag themselves to the polls to vote; they'll be getting their ballots in the mail. Thus, any effort to model turnout based on a 2010 electorate isn't just wrong because this isn't 2010, but because the dynamics of voting have dramatically changed in these last four years.
I'm in the school that says we'll hold on to the two key races in Colorado. But at this point, that's just an educated guess. Or is it? Project New America has some intriguing data:
There are 1 million active registered voters in Colorado who voted in 2012 but didn't vote in 2010 or registered after 2012. They were sent a ballot last week. In our survey, 83 percent say they have already voted or plan on voting. According to Catalist voter file returns from Oct 23, 2014, 89,000 have already voted (making these Presidential Survey voters 21 percent of votes cast already).
The
details of the poll, which remember, only covers irregular or new post-2012 voters (the kind that wouldn't pass a traditional "likely voter" screen).
* 82 percent received a ballot in the mail
* 83 percent of these Presidential Surge Voters have already voted or plan to vote
* 22 percent have already voted in the survey. The voter file shows 90,446 of them have already cast a ballot, comprising 21 percent of all votes cast through Wednesday
* Senator Udall leads 48-34 percent among these Presidential Surge Voters
* 55-36 among those who already voted
* 48-36 among whites, 56-29 among Hispanics
* 44-40 among men, 52-29 among women
* 53-27 among cell phone voters, but Gardner leads 44-42 among landline
* Governor Hickenlooper leads 49-32 percent with slightly higher margins across subgroups
In Colorado, we have endorsed in the secretary of state race, you can donate for this critical race here. You can also donate to Mark Udall at his website here, and John Hickenlooper at his website here.
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Those voters aren't counted in much of the public polling, either because they're hard to reach (cellphone only) or because they don't pass through tough "likely voter" screens (didn't vote in 2010 or, for younger voters, 2012). In Colorado, Democrats don't need to figure out a way to drag these irregular voters to the polls, they just need them to mail back the ballot—a much lighter and easier lift.