Colorado early voting: GOP blows out Dems

Republicans are blowing out Democrats in Colorado early voting, the secretary of State there says.

ADVERTISEMENT According to the Associated Press, 104,000 more GOP voters have taken advantage of early voting in Colorado than Democrats. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is trailing his Republican opponent, Rep. Cory Gardner, in most polls. A loss by Udall would make it exceedingly difficult for Democrats to retain control of the Senate.

Colorado’s Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, is also in a tight race as he seeks a second term. Historically Democratic voters have long been more likely to stay at home in midterm elections, and the party’s base is also unhappy or disaffected with many of their leaders.

The AP said that 41 percent of the 1.1 million early ballots were from Republicans, with roughly a third coming from Democrats and a quarter from independent voters. Colorado’s voters are basically evenly split among the three groups.

Republicans said those results showed how strong a position they were in, after the GOP has tried to modernize its get-out-the-vote efforts on social media and other platforms.

Older voters – more likely to side with the GOP – have voted early in bigger numbers, and younger Republican voters have even outvoted their Democratic counterparts.

4-3 would probably be safer, though I think 5-2 isn’t impossible. However, noting the unfortunate Californication of the state, we’d probably have to shoot for the former. For a brief time in the ‘90s, had the GOP a free hand, they could’ve gotten a 5-1 delegation (as Boulder’s 2nd became briefly marginal — hell, even the 1st reached the point that the late Joe Rogers scared Patsy Schroeder into retirement).

I had actually used Dave's Redistricting App to create a 5-2 CO map a while ago. I turned CO-2 into a massive Democratic vote sink by taking in Boulder, then running down into east Jefferson County and a large chunk of western Adams County - basically all the stuff Ed Perlmutter represents now - and then taking it up to the most Dem precincts of Fort Collins and also swiping Aspen and as many of the liberal ski resorts as I could. I ended up with a 70%-28% Obama 08 district. With CO-1, I had it take in the most Democratic parts of Aurora. Finally, concerning Pueblo, I moved it into the CO-5. This was actually in the GOP plan passed in 2003 that was struck down by the state courts. The district still is strongly Republican, with McCain winning it 55%-43%.

I ended up making a new CO-7 that was basically the old CO-4 pre-2012 redistricting, just minus several heavy-GOP Eastern Plains counties but also without heavy Dem precincts in Fort Collins, so it balances out. CO-6 is much the same as it was, with Littleton, Columbine, some of Lakewood, much of southern Arapahoe County and northern Douglas County. I drew up a new CO-4 that actually has some similarities to the current CO-6, except it has much less of Adams County, doesn't have the northern part of Aurora, has all the Eastern Plains that I dropped out of CO-7, loops around through southern Douglas County and also takes in some of Jefferson County and drops down west of El Paso County to take in some Republican precincts in Pueblo County. The district ended up being a 50.5%-47.8% McCain district, but I think it's a bit of a mess. It just ends up with its toes in too many areas and would be a pain for its congressman to get around. I'll probably redraw it to make it more compact.

Here's some views of my map:

Anyway, I think a 5-2 map shouldn't be hard. If you pack in some of the Dem-heavy precincts from the Denver suburbs in CO-1 and CO-2 and crack what's left, you can end up with Republican majorities in the remaining districts.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.