I just got back from an evening of canvassing in Weld County Colorado.  Recent polls have shown the race here to be extremely close so I thought I'd share a few personal stories to help alleviate any jitters fellow Kossacks may be feeling because of the poll numbers.   We canvassed for one hour and every experience was a positive one with voters who are committed downticket to our candidates.

Colorado GOP Senate Candidate Bob Schaffer and several of the most embattled incumbent Republican senators are going to skip the upcoming Republican national convention in St. Paul, Minn., according to an article in The National Journal.

Schaffer is running for the seat being vacated by Republican Wayne Allard.

Cross posted from DemConWatch

When I started working on DemConWatch in early December it seemed like August would never come. Now we're one month away from the opening gavel of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

We've built up a great team with the additions of DocJess and Mr. Super and will continue to bring you all the latest news on the convention and the upcoming elections.

Great news from the west

Quinnipiac College has a new set of polls out today, the general tenor of which is that McCain is making gains on Obama.  One of the states surveyed was Colorado, in which Obama has been holding a steady, albeit small, lead throughout the general-election campaign.

Today's Q-Poll gives us a result of McCain 46, Obama 44.  Looking at the internals of the poll, however, suggests that party ID may be awry...

(Continues below the fold)

Quinnipiac University/Wall Street Journal/ Washingtonpost.Com have released a new batch of polls today in some important states.  Like many recent polls, Obama seems to have bled some of his support this month.  

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/...

COLORADO: McCain 46% - Obama 44%
MICHIGAN: Obama 46% - McCain 42%
MINNESOTA: Obama 46% - McCain 44%
WISCONSIN: Obama 50% McCain 39%

Bush wants Congress to lift the ban on developing Oil Shale on federal lands on the Green River Plateau in Colorado and Utah.

That brought an immediate response from Colorado's Democratic Governor Bill Ritter:

GOV. RITTER CRITICIZES FEDS OVER OIL SHALE REGULATIONS

"Someday the technology may exist that will allow us to responsibly extract oil from Colorado shale. But that day is years away. That day will only come when crucial questions about impacts to water, air quality, wildlife and our local communities -- are fully understood and answered. That day is not today. This was a premature and unnecessary act by the federal government that is not supported by science or technology.

Extracting oil from shale rock is an extremely dirty, insanely carbon intensive process, that will dump huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere because the shale rock has to be heated to 700 degrees to get the oil out.

Two years ago I published a bunch of diaries on Senate races, with elaborate graphs.  

They're BAAAAACK!

Method:
 1.  I gathered polling data from Pollster.com.  I only included polls in 2008.
 2.  I assigned the undecided in two ways: 75% to the challenger (per general practice) and 50-50.  The first method is represented by solid boxes.  The latter method by hollow dots.
 3.  I then added loess lines to all 4 series of boxes: Solid lines for the solid boxes, dotted lines for the hollow dots.  Good descriptions of loess (aka local regression) are here  (technical notes on local regression)

Some notes:
 1.   For any poll and for either method, the percentages add to 100.  
 2.  If the hollow box is far from the solid box, then there are a lot of undecideds.

A State of Colorado program which provides scholarships to students attending private and public colleges in the state, in lieu of institutional support to public colleges and universities, has been held unconstitutional by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, because pervasively religious institutions, such as Colorado Christian University and Naropa University, are excluded from the program.

The Colorado program was devised to cause public universities tuition to be excluded from revenues subject to anti-tax provisions of the state constitution whose growth is limited.  When an institution has less than 10% state support, its revenues don't count towards the cap.  

This story caught by Mark Nickolas over at Political Base deserves a lot more attention than it has received.  It turns out that not only is McCain getting killed by the traditional media, his advertising campaigns just aren't working, either.  Voters seem to be immune to the appeals of an angry, befuddled septuagenarian looking to preside over Bush's 3rd term.

The Bush administration has drafted new rules in their attempt to keep us dependent on oil, while transferring more Colorado lands and resources into the hands of their largest donors. The Bush plan accelerates oil-shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, rather than investing in alternative fuels. Still many years away from even potential results, the plan is being sold as an emergency short term response to current energy prices.

(cross-posted at SquareState.net)

If this poll has already been diaried, somebody let me know and I'll delete it.  However, I ran a quick serach and couldn't find anything.

So take this all for what's it's worth.

In Colorado, Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain by seven percentage points, 49% to 42%. However, when leaners are included, McCain is more competitive and pulls to within three points, 50% to 47%.

A month ago, the race was a toss-up, but two months ago Obama led by six.

Rasmussen CO Poll:  This telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports July 21, 2008. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

I have lived in Colorado all my life and on August 1st of this year my beloved home state will turn 132 years old and I will turn 51.  My family comes from upstate New York, Missouri, Massachusetts and points up and down the eastern coast of America.  In 1914 my paternal grandfather ran away from home in Easton, New York and came west to join the Army, when World War I ended and his enlistment was up he returned to the high dry plains of Colorado,  My grandmother's father travelled from Nebraska to eastern Colorado in 1902 riding in a covered wagon to find a piece of earth to call his own and homestead.  Although the conditions were harsh, they stayed, and lived and scraped and survived through the dustbowl and the Great Depression.  Grandma said the worst thing about the drylands was the wind and the lack of trees, but when she went east to visit relatives she found she missed the wide open skies and the air filled with the smell of sagebrush.

I'm short on time, so enough said?

Please take the time to donate $8.00 to send Colorado's Mark Udall to the US Senate.

Donate Here

I'm trying to find 125 donors to give just $8.00 to help elect Colorado's Mark Udall to the Senate.

Why should you give $8.00?
Excellent question!

Each and every day, from now until I reach my goal, I'll give you a reason. Fact, fiction, humor, fear ... it's all on the table as I make my first ever attempt at fund-raising.

Reason #1: Scheherazade Sings for Her Supper

Has anyone noticed this Bidlack guy? He’s a DEMOCRAT running in America’s most Republican district (Colorado’s 5th), and has just bitch-slapped two GOP challengers running for Congress in the just-in 2nd quarter fundraising reports.

On the rec list, there is a diary concerned with election theft, and in this one, I'll present reasons why theft can't happen this year.  I believe that while a close election could be stolen, you won't be able to steal a landslide...

 On the front page, there is a great piece discussing the 20 offices opening all over Virginia, and the McCain camp reaction is simply classic...

Marc Ambinder also notified us today that the offices are opening in Montana too

That a Democratic presidential candidate opened six campaign offices in Montana? As of Saturday, Obama For America will have 24/7 "Campaign for Change" outposts In Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Helena and Missoula.

Honestly, these News Releases are very abstract, without context, visuals, and don't break into the National News.  That's why I want to draw attention to the turn out of 1,200 volunteers greeting the opening of Colorado's field offices on Tuesday.