Talk Elections

Quinnipiac poll of Colorado:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/colorado/release-detail?ReleaseID=1942

Clinton 45%
Cruz 42%

Cruz 45%
Biden 39%

Christie 43%
Clinton 42%

Christie 50%
Biden 33%

We've now had three polls of Colorado this year (one by PPP and two by Quinnipiac).  All show Clinton doing worse there than in the other states that were 2012 swing states.  Whether that'll hold up into 2016 is of course an open question, but it appears to be "real" for now, and not just a bad sample.

Colorado is NOT Clinton country.  There's something so "Washington-insider" about Hillary that they just don't and will not like about her.  Sometimes you just have to step outside the hardcore analysis and get a feel for these things, Forum. 

Dear god Unca Joe....

Colorado has become the other Ohio.

Cruz only trails Clinton by 3 in Colorado.

I doubt that Clinton is struggling this much with Colorado. She certainly wouldn't be ahead of Cruz by only 3%.

That is such a fascinating way to spin it. Cruz is supposedly so conservative and so out of the mainstream, and yet he's within the margin of error of winning a big swing state for Obama.

Cruz would most definitely not do that well, he's a poor fit for the state. Quinnipiac isn't always that great with polling, they can be off in either direction from time to time.

Clinton was routinely trounced in Colorado against McCain in 2008, so no surprise she does poorly in Colorado. She also performed badly in Oregon, Montana and Washington.

Why is Colorado so hostile to her?  She isn't that different from Obama, and what she loses with young voters can be made up by older voters.

Obama appealed to the Denver suburbs. He was young, new, and academic. Hillary is, as some have noted, Washingtonian.

This poll is as believable as one showing Warren trailing Rubio by only 3% in North Carolina.

Hildawg should win Colorado easily, but it'll definitely trend R.

It's funny how experience can actually be a liability to some candidates.

This just can't be real.

Biden sucks.

http://youtu.be/wIuk3G9Xixc?t=1m16s

fav/unfav %s:

Christie 50/22% for +28%
Cruz 26/16% for +10%
Clinton 51/44% for +7%
Biden 40/50% for -10%

Few voters actually know who Cruz is, but the poll shows him with higher name recognition among Republicans than Democrats, which helps explain his positive favorability.  Cruz is also +15 among Hispanics, which is higher than Christie.  That presumably helps explain why he does comparatively well in the general election matchups.  Some Hispanic voters may not know who he is, but give him a positive rating because of his last name.

Also, the gender gap in this poll is enormous.  Christie vs. Clinton:
men: Christie +17
women: Clinton +14

A 31 point gender gap.  And the Cruz-Clinton gender gap is 33 points!

Few voters know who Cruz is.  I think he benefits here from being a Republican with a Hispanic last name.


The Cruz numbers really don't mean much, because his name recognition is so poor.  The Christie vs. Biden and Clinton numbers aren't much out of line with the previous polls.  And Quinnipiac did do slightly better than PPP in Nate Silver's 2012 ratings.

This.

Take a look at this 2008 poll from SurveyUSA: In Colorado, Clinton already did much worse than Obama against McCain.

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=0ccaa21f-6b0d-43ad-be26-29f8a998f6b1

I just looked up the two previous Colorado polls this year.  The other Quinnipiac poll had Christie leading Clinton by 3, and the PPP didn't include Christie at all, but had Clinton leading Rubio by 4, when she was leading him nationally by about 9 or 10.

Overall, for Christie vs. Clinton, a Christie lead of 1 would mean a 6 point swing towards the GOP here, compared to 2012.  It's not really that big a swing, compared to some of the swings *towards* Clinton we're seeing in the polls of Southern states.  Since Clinton's current national polling lead on Christie is comparable to Obama's victory margin over Romney in '12, the swings we're seeing towards the Dems in the South would have to be offset by GOP swings elsewhere for everything to even out.  It really shouldn't be that surprising.

Of course, this is not to say that the polls will remain like this for the next three years.  It's just a description of the polling *right now*.....which, yes, includes Christie doing better in Colorado than in several Southern states, strange as that may seem, when you compare to the 2008 and 2012 maps.

I don't think so. Colorado won't be a toss-up if this is true, it'll be on the "Likely republican" column if it's a Clinton vs. Christie race. We all know that polls will tighten after the Conventions, and an even race means that Christie would carry Colorado by more than 5 points.

Bill Clinton won Colorado in 1992 40-36-23 and lost it in 1996 44-46-7.  Bill won the state in 1992 because of Ross Perot and lost it in 1996  because Dole picked up a much-larger percentage of Perot voters (gaining 10% to the 4% of the Perot voters of 1992 that Bill Clinton picked up).

Colorado seemed to be drifting D -- but remember that it is largely near Denver, Pueblo, and the New Mexico state line. Some Colorado counties went more than 80% to Romney in 2012, demonstrating how politically polarized Colorado is. People in those counties are getting very loud in their disdain for what they consider 'Mile-High Marxists' who do not understand them, and that is beginning to show in Colorado polling.

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2012&fips=8&f=1&off=0&elect=0   

Barack Obama probably maxed out the Democratic vote in 2008 in Colorado and came close in 2012. Hillary Clinton will have a tough time in Colorado if the Colorado Right energizes its base.

I don't think its the Eastern Plains she has to worry about. It seems that where Obama really turned off people was on the Western Slope and even some ski towns swung right quite a bit. The new law pushing renewables in Colorado seems to have backfired quite a bit.

Though if IIRC, this time in 2009, Obama was in the 30s in Colorado.

There is no way Tancredo is within 1 point of Hickenlooper. Also, Obama's approval is not 41% when its 45-47% nationally in a state that was D+1. And if Clinton is tied with the white vote she wins CO by much more than 3 points, probably 9-12. Obama lost whites 54-44 and won by over 5%.

For some reason Quinnipiac polls always sold Obama short here in 2012 while giving him a larger edge than he should have had in OH/FL. Hopefully PPP will do Colorado soon. I'd suspect CO trends R just because Hillary would have more room to grow in FL, VA, NC. Either way, the 2016 Dem will need a big advertising blitz here.

Or of course a large amount of donations before the campaign begins. The reason why Colorado has trended from the Republicans is that a majority of the people live in one area and that area has attracted the primary residences and businesses of made men and women that are gay or liberal. Without that place, Colorado would probably be between the size of Idaho or Nebraska as there is one other midsized city and two other small ones and there wouldn't be the likes Perlmutter. Those "1%er of 1%ers" haven't given away large amounts of their fortunes just for Colorado to be considered Republican Flyover just when things started to get good there.

Of course Demographics is first and foremost, but there are places like Arizona and Texas where the Democrats are leaderless and at least 50 and room percent of the population think they still are some bizarre leftist group that is trying to ruin their life (as if it wasn't already for many of them).


I take solace in the fact that Obama, as late as 2011 was worse of in Colorado than he was in many red states and still came within a point of his relative victory margin in 2008. And another Q-poll has similar numbers for Hillary in Iowa. I really doubt that states like Arkansas or Georgia will actually come through if states like Oregon, Iowa and Colorado don't.

This map


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is more believable than this map

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Then again, Hillary might be an candidate that makes middle age voters "come home" to the parties of their youth and make young people think that older people are more of threat because they hogging social security and not because they are hogging economic opportunity.

2008 definitely showed Clinton is vulnerable.

States tend to revert back to normal once the campaign heats up. Look at how Romney led Obama in all NH polls before the primary but afterwards it remained at its usual D+1 level. In 2008 Obama looked better in North Dakota but the final results kept it solidly R.

This is a good point.

CO will end up voting D - it always polls more R than it actually ends up voting.