Just ahead of the Democratic National Convention, Politico's Steven Shepard reports on an interesting development out in the Centennial State:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is pulling its television advertisements from Colorado, at least temporarily, after building a sizable and durable lead in the traditional battleground state.
The decision could reflect increasing confidence about Clinton’s chances to capture Colorado’s nine electoral votes in the fall. But a Clinton campaign official, granted anonymity to discuss the campaign's internal operations, stressed the campaign's advertising strategy against Donald Trump will change constantly over the next three months.
Colorado was part of the Clinton campaign’s initial, general-election advertising campaign, which began in mid-June and cost at least $22 million. But Monday is the final day of that ad buy.
There’s a new buy of at least $7.7 million coming in eight swing states, but Colorado is not on the list. As Shepard alludes, it could mean that Clinton feels very good about Colorado, which has been trending bluer and which Barack Obama carried twice, or it could just be a head-fake designed to confuse Republicans. But it’s hard to say which, as Priorities USA, the main pro-Clinton super PAC, is still up on the air in Colorado.
According to the Huffington Post Pollster average, Clinton has about a five-point lead on Donald Trump in Colorado, the same as Obama’s 2012 margin over Mitt Romney. That’s probably too close for Team Clinton to conlude the state is in the bag, but it's also possible their internal polling paints a more favorable picture. Depending on how their future ad spending shapes up, we’ll find out how they’re truly feeling soon enough.
