Colorado is divided into almost equal thirds, politically. Unaffiliated voters there have as much vote power as Republicans and Dems and run the gamut from right of the teabaggers to left of Michael Moore. They also hold the keys to the Colorado Senate race, according to PPP's new poll, because Bennet and Buck both have their bases all locked up.
The Senate race in Colorado continues to look like it will be one of the closest in the country on Tuesday night. PPP's final poll there finds Ken Buck ahead of Michael Bennet by the slimmest of margins, 49-48.
Each candidate has his party base pretty much sewn up. Bennet is winning 87% of Democrats and Buck is winning 86% of Republicans. Giving Buck his slim lead is a 50-46 advantage among independents.
One thing interesting to note within the results is that with respondents who say they've already voted--accounting for 66% of the sample--Bennet is actually ahead by a 52-46 margin. Buck leads 55-41 with those who say they have not yet cast their ballots. Bennet should probably be rooting for ugly weather on election day, any little thing could help in such a close race if he already has a lead in the bank.
The cautionary note for Bennet here is that Buck's people will turn out, no matter what the weather, because of the worst-in-the-nation anti-abortion "personhood" amendment that would confer legal personhood on a zygote is on the ballot. That drove much of the vote in the primaries for Buck and those are determined voters. Hopefully there's an equal number of dedicated, thoughtful voters among the independents who realize how outrageous both that amendment and Ken Buck are.
On the governor's side, Tancredo is scarily close, but Hickenlooper still leads.
In the Governor's race John Hickenlooper is looking a little bit more solid than he did a week ago and now leads by 5 points, getting 48% to 43% for Tom Tancredo and 8% for Dan Maes. Hickenlooper will probably win but there's a very good chance he will do so without cracking 50% of the vote.
The Republican split has proven critical to his chances for victory. Hickenlooper is taking 87% of the Democratic vote while Tancredo is getting just 71% of Republicans with 15% still planning to cast their votes for Maes. Tancredo's beating Hickenlooper with independents 49-45, but unless he can push up closer to 85% of the Republican vote he's not going to be able to pull it out.
That wouldn't be a disastrous result in the long run, though I'd like a more comfortable margin for Hickenlooper. But Maes at 8 percent dooms the Republicans to minor party status in the next two elections, not only dropping them to the low-rent half of the ballot but also severely curbing their fundraising abilities in the primaries. That we could live with.