Of all the Senate races in the country, the one that is perplexing me the most is the one in Colorado. For starters, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Senator Mark Udall is doing so poorly in the polls. Every theory I can come up with has something to do less with Udall than with state politics and a backlash against Governor Hickenlooper and the state legislature. But Hickenlooper is polling ahead of Udall in every survey. So, if it isn’t a backlash against state Democrats, what is it that Udall has done that has so displeased Coloradans? Is it possible that Rep. Cory Gardner is running some kind of great campaign? If so, I haven’t seen anyone arguing that.
While Udall has been prominent in questioning the Intelligence Community, he hasn’t otherwise distinguished himself in the Senate, either positively or negatively. I assume that the CIA isn’t running a subterranean campaign against him, so what gives?
Based on both the polling numbers and the bad trend in the numbers, I am pretty much forced to predict that Udall will lose. But it really is agonizing because the one thing we know is that the shape of the Colorado electorate is going to different this time, and more friendly to the Democrats, because they’ve moved to elections by mail. When a ballot arrives in your living room, your likelihood of voting goes up by several orders of magnitude. Have the pollsters modeled this correctly? Have they correctly predicted either Latino preferences or participation?
There are still reasons to hope that Udall will greatly outperform the polls, but until I understand why he’s doing so badly in the first place, I can’t predict that he will win.
Green Caboose (CO resident) in the prior thread explained the trend. The GOP went with heavy TV (and probably radio) adverts beginning in late August and Hick and Udall held back on their TV campaign until a week or so ago. Now the airwaves are flooded with DEM adverts. As dire as it looks for Udall from the polls, might be too soon to call this.
Probably too late. If the Clintons proved anything electorally, it was to hit back swiftly and hard. I learned that lesson on the streets of Chicago also long long ago.
This.
I’m tired of Democrats acting like cowards.
If they’re not interested in fighting fire with fire, they aren’t worthy of being voted for to begin with. If all they are going to do is play nice like Kerry in ’04, then fuck it.
Hit them hard with the truth, or go home.
I think the Gardner endorsement by the Denver Post was telling. Gardner and his backers have been able to define Udall in a very negative fashion and people just don’t understand or fail to realize how extreme Gardner really is. If the editorial board at our states flagship newspaper is that far out too lunch on what kind of politician Gardner is, I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the state.
I think that is holding true to some extent for the rest of the country as well. People, journalists, etc. just outright refusing to accept that the Republican party is off the rails.
Remember the poll a few years ago that found just that? People flat out don’t believe anyone can be as crazy as republicans claim.
See this one: http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/poll-americans-say-wed-be-better-if-mitt-romney-won-
2012/wed-07022014-739am
Americans are essentially infantalized. Drum has covered this some, pointing out that even though Obama is basically following the course of action in foreign policy people think is best, they still disapprove. Anything that forces the country to inspect its actions as anything less than pure and righteous pisses people off.
But this has ominous indications for the election if people really do think they should have voted for Romney.
I’ve heard a lot of Gen X think Reagan was the greatest President. Of course he was the first they ever knew.
I knew Jimmy Carter, but then too I’m an early Gen X’er. Reagan was the first president that I fully understood (I didn’t understand Kennedy’s primary of Carter until a couple decades later) and I cheered when Reagan was shot. I’ve always been hyper-partisan, but when you’re in middle school you haven’t yet developed a filter and I called my closest friend yelling “Zero Factor m/f’ers!” into the phone. Not my finest moment but it’s also one that I don’t regret.
All three major newspapers in the Chicago metro area (Tribune, Sun-Times, Daily Herald) have endorsed Romney-clone and convicted Medicare-fraudster Bruce Rauner for Governor.
The Sun-Times is the traditional Democratic Newspaper and the Herald usually have Republican leaning but reasoned endorsements. Not so this year. Money Talks!
BTW, all three endorsed Obama in 2008 and the Tribune endorsed Obama in 2012 although the Herald endorsed Romney and the Sun-Times endorsed no one.
I sure hope you’re right, Marie.
However, I wouldn’t count on an increase in voting participation. Most academic studies do not predict an increase in participation.
Government studies say there is an increase.
However, even without an increase in the number of voters, I would suspect that the definition of “likely voter”, “non-voter”, and “will vote” is different. I would further suspect that national and regional polling outfits will not change their methodologies until they blow up in the their faces (re: cell phone useage vs landline polls).
There could easily be a significant glitch in the polling of Colorao.
I wouldn’t place any big bets on it, though.
Generically, would agree with you. However, recent CO polling in every election cycle underestimates final results for DEMs and overestimates final results for GOP. A two to five point swing. That doesn’t seem to be enough polling bias to push Udall over the top. However, CO is going with an all mail-in ballot this year. And we saw what happened when Oregon adopted the all mail-in ballot.
My head says Udall loses, but my gut says not so fast. Whenever I have such a disconnect, my head usually gets it wrong. Now if only I could get my “gut” up to 100% accuracy.
My two cents:
I think Udall has run away from being a Democrat. He was slammed for Obamacare, and there’s been nothing from the Udall campaign defending it eventhough CO is a success story and even though Kaiser Foundation found that Denver would have the largest premium decrease in the nation next year. He doesn’t defend Obama. His commercials initially were solely focused on the women’s issues which, while important, aren’t the only issues.
Democrats who are ashamed of being Democrats lose. Gardner set the tone that Democrats and Obama are bad, and Udall is running from it. Not a good way to fire up the base.
What I think also plays into it is the Democrats reluctance, or cowardice, to label Gardner and Ernst, among other GOPers, as extremists.
Sort of like Grimes not running on KyNect. The folly of relying on personality instead of policies in elections. The GOP position that the public loathes the PPACA isn’t supported by polling. Public opinion ranges from okay to not nearly good enough. Political candidates in both parties get a free ride when the “top guy” enjoys popularity, but in not staking out some separate ground during that period, they’re left ducking for cover when the “top guy” falters, as they always do at some point.
An analysis I just saw said public opinion is generally that the law is on the whole, bad but should be fixed.
My perception as an outsider is that too many resources have been wasted talking about birth control and the NSA and not enough about economics.
Front page post by kos on Colorado just posted re: 100% mail in vote may make CO hard to predict or poll. Let’s hope so….
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/24/1338707/-100-percent-vote-by-mail-makes-Colorado-extra-unpr
edictable
The mail-in ballot is a wild card, to be sure.
2 years ago I served as a Democratic observer in a somewhat (40%) minority precinct in Colorado Springs. No shenanigans went on in the precinct I volunteered in (the local County Clerk, a wingnut’s wingnut, had targeted the two majority-Democratic precincts for the usual GOP treatment but as my precinct was still 55% GOP it was unscathed). However, I interacted with a LOT of voters that day (the person running the voting – a Republican as it turned out – quickly learned to trust me and began sending all the voters with registration problems to me) and noted a few very common themes:
And I’ll bet that most of those people are not being sampled in the polls. I was surprised how many people were there at 7 am simply because (they told me) they had to work until after the polls closed that night. If you aren’t at home 5-7 pm you won’t be answering surveys.
Has Obama’s decision to hold off on using executive orders to help with Latino immigration been part of the problem?
Not hurting Udall in NM.
I’m sure it doesn’t help.
It might be. Hasn’t Jorge Ramos(the Univision guy) been hammering the President because of it?
There’s something (bad) going on in Colorado – not sure what. Glad Booman’s focusing on this race because it’s important to look at.
Udall’s trailing, Obama polls poorly and yes, even Hillary Clinton is polling badly in CO. The Democratic brand there seems to have taken a real hit in the past couple of years.
I wonder how legalization plays into this culturally – is there a mini-backlash going on that benefits the GOP? Just a hunch, could be wrong. But can’t think of another reason. And it may be short-lived.
But right now CO seems to be losing its swing state Democratic possibilities, at least for now. We have to watch this closely.
You do know how Hickenlooper became rich, right? Also, he’s been disparaging pot legalization. And both are connected if you know the answer to the question I posed. Also, Hickenlooper is basically a Rockefeller Republican. Not exactly a recipe to turning out the Democratic base. I have no idea why Udall is doing so crappy, according to the polls. Part of the reason is the reluctance to cast Gardner as the extremist he is.
Based on the Kos analysis, my sense is that the election is in the hands of the Latino mail-in vote. And their turnout.
As I’ve hinted before, I think we’re moving into a period in which opinion polling becomes more volatile because of the difficulties of getting a representative sample and the difficulties in constructing a screen to know what a representative sample is.
The only years for comparison are 1958, 1986, 1998, and 2006. And none of those have clear directions relative to predicting this cycle.
It’s a wait-and-see election, but from the polling it looks like the media-GOP coalition has it sewn up.
And on reflection the message to white voters from the Concerned Citizens of Cumberland County that I posted a comment on yesterday is that a GOP Congress will proceed with impeachment of Barack Obama. Or that’s the implied promise.
And why wouldn’t the CIA run a campaign against Udall? Is democracy too sacred?
The BloombergTV video in this dKos diary DSCC’s Cecil’s Senate Race Overview is interesting.
Whether it’s just style or more substance, Cecil’s optimism isn’t arrogant like what is familiar from GOP campaign officials. Don’t share his optimism that Bill Clinton will push Pryor over the finish line, but it’s something interesting to watch. Cecil did confirm that the DSCC is in SD for a Weiland win.
Come on Booman…give us a break…Udall is going to win…I hope…the polls are wrongish…the Latinos I know are voting for the D’s…and they don’t answer the polling calls either…a block of voter/new friends are smarter than the gop/baggers give them credit for…
You have to predict that?
What happens if you don’t?
I’m going to echo what some are saying. All summer anti-Udall commercials flooded the airwaves. Even now, anytime you click on a Youtube video you have to first watch a damn anti-Udall ad. During the summer months, there was barely any push back. I kept wondering when our side was going to start fighting back. I guess they were trying to save their money, but I think Gardner’s people were really able to paint Udall as with Obama 99% of the time (is that really so bad?), a strong supporter of the evil Obamacare (why no attempt to explain the success of healthcare in Colorado?), opposed to Keystone, etc.
Part of the problem is that Gardner comes across as a nice guy. He is a very slick, and homey, politician. And for months, they allowed him to preserve that image.
Suddenly in the past few weeks there have been a whole slew of anti-Gardner ads associating him with Personhood, but also painting him as someone you just can’t trust. I really don’t know why they waited so long for this.
I was mad at Hickenlooper too for vowing not to make any negative ads.
They have been bringing in the big guns this past week. Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren were in Boulder. Michelle Obama came to Fort Collins yesterday along with Udall, Hickenlooper, and Michael Bennett. Michelle still has that star power and the crowd was excited (and big), though this is a university town and she spoke on campus.
And it really saddens me that anyone who supported the government shutdown should be rewarded with a promotion to the US Senate.
How don’t the ads against Gardner’s lamebrain position write themselves?
Reminds me of when Democrats were so freaked-out about the GOP machine that they acted like whipped puppies when the Schiavo issue was nationalized by Frist and GWB. How could they have totally missed that the overwhelming majority in the country didn’t want government interference in their family and personal end-of-life decisions? If a nobody far beyond the sidelines could see that, why couldn’t the DEM pros?
The ads against Gardner over the past month or so have been relentless.
Yes, they went from non-existent to omnipresent in a period of a week (or less). The one word that is in every single ad is “extreme”. You can’t say that they aren’t staying on message.
The ads come from all sources – Democratic committees, PACs for women’s issues, PACs for the environment, etc. But not Udall, of course, as his own ads are all positive (as is normal these days for campaigns – let the other groups do the attacking).
My 20 year old daughter is getting flooded with snail mail from Planned Parenthood and other groups concerned with women’s issues about both Gardner and Beauprez. I have to tell you, any woman in Colorado her age who goes out and votes Republican should be denied access to birth control, women’s health insurance (including pre-natal care), and of course abortion (as in the “I”m not like those sluts who come here for abortions – my situation is different” wingnuts) because that is what that woman is trying to do to lower income women in this state.
Exactly. The other tag line you hear a lot: Cory Gardner–you just can’t trust this guy. Now, I wonder how many people will vote against 67–the personhood amendment–and for Gardner. But there is also the danger that 67 will pass.
I’ll add another observation from on the ground here in CO – in addition to those already posted in this and the last thread.
The local Democratic party apparatus is quietly confident, despite the polls. They have a detailed list of both reliable Democratic voters and those who are possible/likely and are attempting to contact all of them in person at least 3 times. This allows discussion of issues as well as discussing the mechanics of voting with the mail-in system. We were visited earlier this week for me and my two kids who are now old enough to vote (my wife is sticking to her green card to keep a foothold in Europe, should things get bad here). We’re all registered as unaffiliated which keeps peace with some of our neighbors (this neighborhood gave Obama only 25% of the vote both elections) but also means we get a flood of adverts from both sides. The contact was smart – covered the key points and moved on.
Personally I have no idea how the voting will go, but I can also say Ohio-like shenanigans aren’t going to happen because, except for the SoS, the government here is still Democratic.
Um…
It’s very good. Straightforward. Clean. Low emotional content. Closer to what voters say they prefer, but seem not to respond well when they cast their ballots.
I think it comes down to Gardner being more photogenic. I was out with some sciency-nerdy types last night. They assumed that Udall and Gardner were the same- all their lives, their vote just seemed to them to maintain status quo, and they weren’t very passionate about need to vote. They are busy people who don’t read newspapers or watch TV. They had seen no ads, and didn’t know how to pronounce Udall’s name.
There are no issues on the ballot that people not paying attention know or care about. In photos, Gardner looks happy and energetic in photos and Udall looks tired and a little depressed. Opposite is true for Hickenlooper- he’s the energetic-looking one in his race.
People have no idea of any issues- climate change, basic rights, everything else are under the radar. Comfortable people think things will go on the same forever.
I think you’re on to something. Gardner is very slick.
I don’t know, he sounds like a Democrat to me… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D-QK4WFXMs8