I don't know if this has been diaried, but I really don't think so. Anyway, yesterday I wrote a diary about the final voter registration numbers in Nevada and how much they resembled the numbers from 2008 there.
Guess what. The latest 2012 numbers in Colorado look pretty darn close to the 2008 numbers. There will actually be one more report before election day in Colorado, but I was able to do a direct apples to apples comparison with the late October report from 2008.
Here are the latest registration statistics for Colorado for the 2012 election:
ACTIVE VOTERS
Dems 871,712 (32.28%)
Reps 912,456 (33.79%)
Inds/Oth 916,014 (33.92%)
TOTAL 2,700,182
TOTAL VOTERS (including inactives)
Dems 1,150,527 (31.57%)
Reps 1,157,083 (31.75%)
Inds/Oth 1,336,734 (36.68%)
TOTAL 3,644,344
Here are the new registrations among active voters since the last report, which was released at the beginning of October:
Dems +64,836
Reps +40,731
Inds/Oth +89,436
So as we can see, Democrats did a lot better in the final report than Republicans, with Independents outstripping both parties.
Now, here are the numbers from 2008.
Unfortunately, Colorado did not organize voters by both party and status back in 2008. So all we have are numbers for total voters. This report is the one that was issued for the same time frame as I have shown for the 2012 numbers - the third week of October just after the registration deadline. There will be another report out just before election day and I will make another apples to apples comparison for that one when it comes out.
Dems 1,051,643 (32.83%)
Reps 1,063,347 (33.19%)
Inds/Oth 1,088,593 (33.98%)
TOTAL 3,203,583
I really wish we could see what the active voter pool looked like in 2008, but nevertheless, we can see that among all voters, Democrats have actually gained on Republicans in the last four years to the tune of about 5,000 votes or so. That is certainly welcome news!
In Colorado, the name of the game is not only turning out the base, but also capturing a big chunk of independent voters. In 2008, here was the partisan breakdown according to the exit polls posted on cnn.com:
Obama McCain
Democrats (30%) 92% 7%
Republicans (31%) 13% 87%
Independents (39%) 54% 44%
So as we can clearly see, independents are extremely important in Colorado. Obama needs to do well among this group in order to capture this all-important swing state again.
Here is a link to the CO sos website: http://www.sos.state.co.us/...
Here is a link to the CNN exit poll: http://www.cnn.com/...