Talk Elections

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_CO_080712.pdf

Interesting that Obama's lead shrinks when Johnson is included:

Obama 46, Romney 42, Johnson 6

What will my Republican friends find to complain about in this poll, the sample is more republican than 2008.

D- 34
R- 37
I- 29

2008 Vote

Obama 48
McCain 45

(oops, typo had to edit post).

But PPP has the audacity to use their own LV model and not the one handed down by God to Scott Rasmussen.


My bet is that it is somewhere in the middle but it does appear that CO is now on the Obama side of the ledger and even if the race tightened to a tie, CO is more likely to go Obama than Romney

I think the thing we can take out of today's Colorado polls is that the race is unchanged. Romney gained 1 point since PPP's last poll and Rassmussen has the race still tied since their last poll.

Obama is winning 92% of the Democrat vote, w/ Romney only picking up 3%. Mitt Romney is only winning 85% of the Republican vote, while Obama attracts 10%. Obama is winning by 9% with Indies.

That's the same percentage of Democrats Obama won in Colorado in 2008. But even McCain managed to get 87% of Republicans in Colorado in a big Democratic year. McCain also lost Indies by about the same margin as they're showing Romney lose Indies.

What is your point? Sub-samples have higher MoEs than the overall poll, nothing is off here at all. Why do you assume Romney must be doing better with indies than McCain did?

Where did I say that? All that I said or implied was that Romney will surely get a higher percentage than 85% of Republicans. What's wrong with talking crosstabs? It's not like we're trashing anyone's mother. Such hostility.

How did McCain do amongst Republicans in Colorado? There has to be a reaon why a state where there are more Republicans than Democrats has been giving Republicans problems....and even if half the undecided Republicans came back, it would put Romney at 88 and 89 if he took like two thirds of them. That's reasonable, isn't it? And with the Independents, it seems that they favor Obama ...but its reasonable to believe they'll break 60/40 to Romney. All it all, 60/40 to Romney would seem reasonable. That would put the race at 52/47. You also have to remember that McCain was doing well here this time around.

So maybe Romney will get to 88 or 89?

87-13 among Republicans, Obama also won Independents 54-44.   A key problem for the GOP is the movement in suburban Denver.  Jefferson and Arapahoe were both strongly Republican counties not that long ago, but have swung quite a bit towards the Dems.  

Its similar to what has gone on in some of the suburban Philly counties, where you have quite a few of the old school Republicans, (well educated middle to upper middle class suburban whites) turned off by the rightward plunge of the GOP.  Combine that with the growing Hispanic population and the lack of traditionally working class Dem areas swinging the opposite way, and you have a big problem if your the GOP.

Bush won 93% of Colorado Republicans in 2004. I've always been of the mind that if the economy continues its stagnant growth pattern until the election, Romney could match that. That's just an opinion, of course, so no one hyperventilates over it.

We can all agree that this state will be close, along with Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Probably due to the marijuana issue on the ballot.

No we can't. The margin here will be larger than in any of the above states.

I'll take that with a grain of salt and doubt.

Well, a similar vote lead in Colorado leads to an higher margin, because it's less populated.

The margin will be higher than in those states--for Romney.

Why are Democrats so obsessed with the liberalization of Colorado?  It's entirely possible that, just as Ohio didn't bounce to the right nearly as quickly as the 2010 elections indicated, that Democratic wins in 2006 and 2008 were not so much a realignment in Colorado politics than a protest vote of sorts.  Republicans actually did quite well in Colorado in 2010, except for a mangled gubernatorial race that the GOP was leading for over a year, and a poor Senate run by a relative novice.

If the GOP was in such bad shape in Colorado, thus meriting the sort of "Colorado is blue through and through" silliness I hear from a lot of Democrats, then the GOP wouldn't have the expansive active voter registration lead that it does.  And the president's new gallup number in Colorado?  A whopping 43%.  That's lower than Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia.

So what's going on here?  Most likely, Colorado has moved quite a bit to the right, along with most of the rest of the country.  The Democratic performance in high profile races in 2010 only masked that, much like President Bush's win here in '04 masked major Democratic gains in other races.  It's a state that Republicans, with a good candidate, should definitely win, and likely will this year. 

And, as it happens, I do think that the president has a great shot to win Ohio and Virginia, which will all but make up for a tough loss in Colorado.

I happen to agree with that, but debating with the majority of democrats on the forums makes me grow tired and unenthusiastic.

Colorado is perhaps the standard-bearer of the Democratic narrative that demography dooms the GOP and the future is bluer than a Pepsi can.  If young people and Hispanics will inevitably carry the Democratic Party to permanent majority status, then a GOP bump in Colorado would be a logical or political impossibility.  Thus the obsession with winning the state.  The problem is that the Colorado that the left has envisioned is largely a fantasy.  Hispanics have been trending to the right in Colorado, and counting on young voters to get you to the state's nine votes is like counting on snow in August.  It's happened before, but it won't happen often.  The reality is that the state is only marginally different politically than it was in, say, 2000 or 1992 (when Mr. Clinton beat Mr. Bush and the state also passed Amendment 2).  The state's political history is much more independent and mixed than "the narrative"--that Mr. Obama made a super-red state unalterably blue--would have you believe.

The only thing that will shake that narrative's viability, however, is November itself.

The real question is whether you guys think Colorado has become more Republican than the nation. I think Colorado is very close to the national average, meaning that a current lead of 2-3 nationally means Obama is up about the same in Colorado. Incidentally, that is the average of the Rasmussen and this poll.

I'd put Colorado's PVI at either EVEN or R +1, so I think you're probably right.  If the president does manage to pull off a 3-point win nationally, he'll probably pick up Colorado by a narrow margin.  On the other hand, I think that the president's PVI is more D-leaning in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and probably similar to Colorado in Virginia.  So if he really does get a 3-point win nationally, then it'll be an 300 EV night for the president. 

My gut says that it'll be tighter than that, though, so I still think that Romney will pick up Colorado but drop several other swing states, including Ohio.  I hope I'm wrong.

The long term trend for the whole southwest (NV, CO, NM, AZ) seems to have a Dem swing. All were pretty solid on the GOP side of the national average, but now NM and NV have already moved over the line to the Dem side, CO seems to be right on the line and AZ could be there in a decade or so.

Of course the upper midwest seems to be moving in the opposite direction. IA seems to have moved to the GOP side of the line and MN and WI could end up there down the line too. MO is also trending more and more GOP and away from being a swing state.

Again, Romney has yet to lead a single poll out of Colorado.

I'd still say Arapahoe is lean Republican. Jefferson is very much a swing county. Much of the county, outside of the southern part, is either Democratic or 50/50 these days.

Colorado is the next Oregon.

And I think Ohio is the next Michigan.

Maybe...


No, just no.

Utah is the next DC.

Colorado is a purple interior Western state. It's not the "next" anything.

I think he has the tragectory right on Ohio, definitely.