Yesterday I published an initial diary about the CO early vote numbers. Today I am updating it with the CO early vote (EV) report provided this morning. The reports come out every weekday morning, and the dates shown on the chart above reflect the date of the report, which are presumably up-to-date through the previous day. So the last report should be issued on November 8.
The Colorado SOS website updates voting information by party and by county. The summary in this diary uses the final EV turnout in 2012 as an index. This means that 100% represents the total 2012 EV turnout. To provide additional context, I am also presenting the current number of votes relative to the final 2012 EVs below.
The total vote shows Democrats with just a 23,000 vote lead now, however you will see below that Jefferson did not update their vote totals from yesterday (see below). When updated, it may add 2K or so votes to the Democratic lead. Here are the vote percentages relative to 2012 EVs for the 4 largest counties (Arapahoe, Denver, El Paso, and Jefferson):
Note that yesterday’s report had Democratic early votes are outpacing Republican ones 21.3% to 19.8%, a difference of 1.5%. Today, that difference is down to 1.3% (23.7% to 22.4%). If there was a reasonably good number in Jefferson County, the difference might actually be 1.4%. So not a huge lead, but it is still a lead.
You can draw your own conclusions at this time. My own observation is that so far, things are looking on track to have a slightly better outcome than 2012 in Colorado. The caveat is that it of course depends on what happens over the next few days. There was a big bolus of early Democratic votes, but Republican votes may be ever so slowly catching up. Whether that remains a trend or not is yet to be seen.