The Dems continue to knock down the early Advantage that Republicans had at the beginning of early voting.
In the 2010 early vote, R's beat the D's by 6.1%. Since there's a delay in reporting, the final Secretary of State report on Monday will probably show a number slightly higher than this.
The D's gained 1% on the R's on Wed. Here's the Wed. early vote results.
Dem 32.5%
Rep 41.9%
None/Other 25.6%
And here's today's report.
Dem 32.3%
Rep 41.3%
None/Other 26.4%
So we gained another 0.4%. It's not as much as we might hope for, but Keep in mind that not all counties vote or report at the same rate. For example, in heavily Republican El Paso county about 40.2% of all it's active voters have already voted. While in heavily Democratic Denver county about 32.2% have already voted.
But El Paso county went from an increase in turnout of 10% from the previous 2 reports, down to an increase of 8% with this report. While Denver county went from 3% to 5%. This is showing the Republicans banked their votes early and their voting rate is now dropping off. We'll continue to gain on them all the way until the polls close on Tue. night. And with the rate we're gaining on them, It's going to be a lot closer than the recent polls have been showing.
If we look at what would happen if all the counties were to vote at about an 85% active voter turnout ( I think it's very realistic) and extrapolate the current voting rate, we get:
Dem 33.4%
Rep 40.9%
None/Other 25.7%
So at this rate, Dems are only behind by 7.5% which is a gain of 1.5% from the previous report. BUT, when you extrapolate those numbers, you get more Republicans voting than are on the active voter list! So their numbers are starting to drop off, and over the next few days will drop sharply.
Heavily Democratic Boulder county continues to outpace their 2010 turnout by a significant margin. It looks like about 58% of those who turned out in 2012 but not 2010 are turning out for this election.
Here's the 2010 early vote:
Now here's the current Boulder county turnout:
The equivalent dates before the election are 10/28/10 and 10/31/14.
Now that we have some pretty big numbers already in from early voting, we have a better idea of what the Electorate will look like. So lets look at how some of the polls built their "likely" voter models.
This is a Republican poll called POP polling that has Gardner up by 3.
Democrat 31
Republican 35
Independent / Something Else 34
The strange thing about this poll is, if Udall was splitting the Independents evenly, he would be losing by 4, not 3. So this Republican poll is saying Udall has a slight lead among Independents.
Here's a PPP poll that shows the race even:
Democrat 37% ........................................................
Republican 38% ......................................................
Independent / Other 25% ...............................
And finally, we have what is becoming a Jokester of a pollster in this cycle, a Quinnipiac poll that has Gardner up 7%.
Republican 32%
Democrat 27
Independent 34
Other/DK/NA 7
Well you can judge for yourself to see which polls have a model that is closest to what we are actually seeing in the early vote.
The Republicans have done a great job at getting their voters to vote early, but an awful lot of those are just voters who would have turned out on election day anyway. So if the Democrats can do a great job at getting their voters to vote late, we take Colorado!
A side note. I just heard an interview on NPR with a CO resident. She supports the Tea Party, AND Elizabeth Warren. That's what we're up against. These are the people that the right wing propaganda machine loves. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth to them. The way we counter this type of ignorance is with:
GOTV! GOTV! GOTV!