Breaking Down the Polls - Colorado Senate

Mark Twain said there were three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and polls. OK, so maybe it wasn't exactly what Mark Twain said, but close enough. (I wasn't lying, but just making a point.) Most recently released polls for the Colorado Senate race between Ken Buck (R) and Michael Bennet (D - Nerd Herd) show an extremely close race, anywhere from Buck +1 to Buck +4. Even using the most current spread touted by one of the most respected pollsters in the business shows a closeness that is pure wishful thinking on the part of the Democrats. Unless people in Colorado either change their minds or undecideds move en masse to Bennet in the next 5 days, Ken Buck will win the race rather comfortably using current projections.

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Rasmussen Reports just released a poll of this race taken Monday, October 25 among 750 "likely voters." Details of the poll's internals are included here:

http://argojournal.blogspot.com/2010/10/poll-watch-rasmussen-colorado_27.html.

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Cutting to the chase, the top-line numbers are (with leaners) Buck leading 48-44, with 6% undecided. When you factor in a 4% margin of error for this survey, it sounds like any body's ballgame, right? Not so fast, Arsenio! As usual with most things, polls especially, the devil's in the details. Time to put my years of professional numbers-crunching to work on this one.

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Delving into the poll's breakdown reveals two key sets of factors that affect the top-line #s to Ken Buck's disadvantage, but should make him breathe easier. First, Rasmussen reveals that his party breakdown for the poll is as follows: 36% Democrat, 30% GOP, and 34% Independent/Other. Sounds innocent enough, and not overwhelmingly imbalanced to cast doubt on the calculated top-line result. Until you consider that in 2008, a year with more Democrat enthusiasm in Colorado than ever before and mediocre turnout on the GOP side in the state, according to exit polls reported by the vaunted New York Times, the party breakdown in Colorado for that amazing Democrat year was 30% Democrat, 31% GOP, and 39% Independent/Other. Apples to apples, are we supposed to believe that in 2010, a year in which most GOP voters will walk over broken glass to vote for their party nominee (or mainly, against the Democrat) and which Democrat enthusiasm has surely come down from the Hope-and-Change high of 2008 (with the Dem Convention being held in their own state just for good measure), that there will be 6% MORE Democrats showing up to vote (about a 20% increase in voter strength from 30% to 36%)? At the same time, the GOP of CO, which had a severe case of the "blah"s in 2008, we're led to believe is actually gonna go down as a % in these midterms? Color me skeptical on those two conclusions...Wait, let me rephrase that: No way in hell either of those two things are gonna happen Nov 2.

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Secondly, going to the "Inside the numbers" section at the end of the survey, we read as follows:

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Colorado Republicans support Buck, while 82% of the state’s Democrats line up behind Bennet. Voters not affiliated with either major party give a 23-point advantage to the Republican.

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So, we get a negligible difference between respective party support for Buck and Bennet, but a ridiculous 23% lead among Indies for the Republican nominee. Just using the 2008 party breakdown - the high-water mark for Democrats and the abyss for the GOP - gives Buck about a 50.5-41 lead, if we assume both the 2008 exit polls and the Rasmussen survey results are accurate. Not exactly a squeaker at the moment, but also not a blowout when one factors in the MOE. It gets worse for Mr. Bennet when one considers that the 2008 breakdown (already skewed in presidential election years with more young and Latino voters than will vote in this midterm) is pure fantasy for CO Democrats in this cycle. Party ID in Colorado during 2004, the last good GOP turnout year, was measured at 38% GOP, 29% Democrat, and 39% Indy/Other. Even assuming a change in the CO electorate over 6 years, the Republican Party is clearly more energized this year, and the proof is in the primary pudding.

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Primary results in CO captured over 400K voters casting ballots for GOP Senate candidates, while a mere 338K voters cast ballots for the democrat candidates. For the algebraically-challenged, that's 20% more ballots cast for the GOP than the Dems. But surely that must be because the GOP side had a heated primary, while the Dems had a lackluster, already-decided primary, right? Nope. The incumbent Democrat senator had to fend off a fierce challenge from the CO state Speaker of the House, and attention was brought to the race with appearances from both POTUS Obama, on behalf of Bennet, and former Prez Bill Clinton (D - Playboy Mansion), who stumped for Bennet's opponent, Andrew Romanoff. But there's no way this GOP enthusiasm hangover can continue through November, correct? After all, the primary was so long ago, right? Actually, Colorado had one of the later primaries this year, in the early part of August - not even three months ago - so base GOP voters are likely roaring and ready to go, one can assume.

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For those that have read this far (and I really do appreciate it), let me do the math under a more realistic scenario than the 2008 turnout model. Just 10% more GOP voters to the polls than Democrats, while keeping the Dem %age at 30% and dropping Indies to a more realistic 37%, gives Ken Buck a 51-40.5 lead (assuming 81% support from each base and the same 23% lead among Indies for Buck), becoming a comfortable lead outside the MOE. Even worse for Bennet, if the same 20% more Republicans than Dems show up to vote as they did in the primaries, he trails about 52-39.5 under a very-energized-GOP scenario - with 6% still undecided! Now we're getting into real blowout range. Unless Democrats rally to Bennett, Indies flock in droves against the grain to vote Democrat at the last minute, and/or the GOP base sleeps through November 2, Ken Buck will be the next Colorado Senator, winning with room to spare. Bank on it.

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- AZDB