How Blue is Colorado? A 2022 Election Review.

Last week we talked about the election from a national perspective and this week, I am going to focus on my own state, Colorado.  Although the Republicans did not do as well as expectations nationally, they still took control of the House which will perhaps dampen the Democrats drive to transform America, at least legislatively.  Biden will still have his phone and his pen and can do pretty much whatever he wants by Executive Order only to be held back from time to time by the courts. The House of Representatives can schedule hearings to shine a light on the Administration’s abuse of power which half of us already know about and the rest probably won’t care.

In the national election, there were bright spots for Republicans as Florida went bright red flipping 4 congressional seats.  In New York although Lee Zeldin lost by 5 points, it looks like he may have dragged 4 Republican congressional candidates across the finish line on the issue of crime.  There also was good news for the Republicans along the Texas border as historically Democrat Hispanics have given up on the Biden administration ever getting control of immigration.

In contrast, in Colorado, there was no joy in Mudville because the mighty Republicans have struck out.

Before the election, the Democrats held the State House by a 41-24 seat margin while in the Senate, they had held a 21-14 margin.  Democrats held the Governorship, and all the subsidiary state-wide elected offices, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Attorney General.  The Republicans fielded candidates from the moderate wing of the party for all of the seats.  It didn’t matter. While no one expected the Republicans to flip the State House, there was a small hope of moving toward a more balanced legislature, an outside chance of a US Senate seat pickup or gaining the Secretary of State Office.  There were 7 contested State Senate seats which if the Republicans had taken 4, they could have controlled the State Senate.  They didn’t.

The Democrats won all 7 toss up State Senate seats…by a lot…to increase their margin to 23-12 within one seat of a veto proof majority.  The Democrats did achieve a 2/3 veto proof majority in the State House winning 46 of the 65 State House seats leaving the Republicans with only 19.

The Democrats came out of election day with 66% of the State Senate seats and 70% of the State House seats

To tell you how blue that is, in deep blue Oregon, Democrats control only 60% of the Senate and 62% of the House seats.  In New York, Democrats control 66% of the Senate and 67% of the House.  Finally, in hopelessly forever Democrat Illinois (my characterization…sorry), Democrats control only 62% of the House seats and 69% of the Senate seats.  Colorado is as blue as blue can be, and it isn’t going back, at least not in my lifetime.

After millions upon millions that were spent in ads, yard signs, debates, text messages etc., the vote was pretty much party vs. party vote.  The vote totals for different statewide candidates were amazingly consistent demonstrating party purity no matter who the candidates or what the issues were. Democrats got 1.3+ million votes to Republicans 1.0+ million votes across the board.

US Senator

D-Bennett                  1,371,102      55.74%

R-O’Dea                    1,018,885      41.42%

Attorney General

D-Weisner                 1,324,098      54.6%

R-Kellner                   1,047,736      43.2%

Treasurer

D-Young                    1,288,603      53.54%

R-Sias                         1,039,108      43.17%

Secretary of State

D-Griswold               1,343,846      54.96%

R-Anderson              1,032,527      42.33%

State Board of Education

D-Plomer                   1,271,831      53.28%

R-Maloit                     1,031,534      43.21%

Democrats held onto to their historical Congressional seats, CD-1, CD-2, CD-6 and CD-7 while Republicans kept their three Congressional seats, CD-4 and CD-5 and CD-3, although this one still hasn’t been officially called.

The Effect of the Libertarians

Colorado Libertarian candidates have always had an adverse impact on Republican candidates over the years, and this year was no different.  Colorado’s newly created 8th Congressional District had been drawn by the 2020 redistricting commission as a competitive district, and it turned out that way with Democrat, Yadira Caraveo, edging Republican, Barbara Kirkmeyer, by only 1700 votes or 0.73%.  However, Libertarian candidate, Richard Ward, who did not campaign, secured 9,095 votes to snatch the victory away from Kirkmeyer.  My friends from the Libertarian Party chide me that Republicans should not expect that Libertarian votes would automatically go to Republicans should a Libertarian not be in the race, but common sense tells me that in these days it is a quite a political stretch from Libertarianism to Democratic woke progressive polices. 

As further proof that this race very likely would have gone to the Republicans, in the same District in the race for the University of Colorado Regent, Republican, Mark Van Driel, beat Democrat Yolanda Ortega, 117,872 to 110253 or 51.7% to 48.3%.

Libertarians also provided the margin of victory to the Democrats in 3 state house races which quite frankly is small stuff at the end of the day.  The absence of Libertarian candidates for the State House would have only changed the election results from an ass-whoopin’” to a “butt kickin’”.

Enough of the numbers…what happened?

Everyone has their opinions as to what happened in this election.  Was it bad candidates?  Inflation? Crime? Poor messaging? Donald Trump?  Abortion?  The Green New Deal? Minority voters?  Suburban women?

While all of these factors may have moved the needle in minor ways, I would suggest that the voting patterns that we saw particularly in Colorado reflect not the candidates, the issues, the money or battles of the day, but how we as voters identify ourselves.  One candidate can be a single mom; another could be a minority or a veteran; an independent businessman or rancher or the first LGBTQQIP2SAA.  And while these and the issues of abortion, Trump, and messaging may be reasons articulated when we are asked by the myriad of nosey pollsters to justify our votes, I would suggest that the real reason we vote the way we do is simply because that is how we have always voted, and that is how we see ourselves.  That may sound cynical but prove to me it ain’t so.

We are basically either Democrats or Republicans and see ourselves as Democrats or Republicans and voting for the other tribe is an act of betrayal against who we are. 

We go into elections ascribing certain traits or stereotypes to our political parties. When we are presented with a candidate from a particular party, we attribute to that candidate the attributes of what we believe the party stands for rather than a critical review of what that particular candidates’ qualifications or positions actually are.

How else can we describe the election of John Fetterman, the new Senator from Pennsylvania?  Fetterman after having a stroke was unable to process verbal communication or speak coherently.  He simply wasn’t physically or mentally qualified to perform the duties of his position.  As a mayor in a failing town, he had never demonstrated any prior competence for governing.  However, voters projected the stereotype of the Democrat party onto Fetterman that he was for the little guy (despite his position that he wished that murderers could be released from jail early). It didn’t matter.  He was a Democrat.

For another example of party over people, we only need to look to our own former Senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Campbell was elected to the US Senate as a Democrat in 1992 as the first Native American US Senator in a spirited race against conservative Terry Considine.  However, apparently because certain members of the Colorado Democrat Party were mean to him, he switched to the Republican party 1995.  What had been the Republicans enemy was now their fan favorite and hated foe of the Democrats. The change was that quick.  He was reelected in 1998 by an entirely different electorate.  Ben hadn’t changed.  He just changed teams.

As for political party stereotypes, Democrats claim to be the party of the people.  It is the party of the unions.  It claims to support the little guy and the underdog.  It is socially liberal with regard to sex, drugs, crime, abortion.  It is compassionate for the needy, representing the underdog. It fights the man and the establishment.

The Republicans are the party of the adults. The party claims to represent business, individual opportunity, economic growth, national defense, personal responsibility, fiscal conservatism, and logic.  Republicans are the party of limited government, freedom, and the 2nd amendment.

The Republicans negatively characterize Democrats as the party of abortion and moral decay, high tax and spenders, anti-religious, anti-American, valuing people who don’t work over the ones who do, assessing high taxes against the people to spend for their own selfish domestic purposes.

Democrats on the other hand negatively characterize Republicans as racist homophobic bigots who seek to dominate based on class, race and gender imposing their religious values on others.  They are portrayed as the party of the rich, selfish, uncharitable and uncaring.

Essentially, the battle line is that Republicans are evil, and Democrats are stupid.  I view the parties on more basic terms.  The Democrats are like your grandmother who is always baking chocolate chip cookies for you while the Republicans are like your grandfather who tells you to pull your pants up, turn your baseball cap around, and get a job. We need them both.

The decision of which group a voter belongs to, was made a long time ago, first suggested by their parents and then their friends and teachers solidified by years of voting.  It is said that when a new voter votes for the same party in a Presidential election for two election cycles in a row, it will take them 20 years to change their party. Your party and its stereotypes become your tribe, your people, your identity.  How you view yourself leads to what type of vote you will cast. I would suggest that the only way change can occur in these hard-wired voting patterns, is 1) if we change how we view of ourselves or 2) when our party changes its historical stereotypes over time, and we recognize it.

For individuals, an example how we might view ourselves differently has been expressed for years in the words of Victor Hugo, “If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brains.”  Of course, it can go the other way as well, if one sees himself moving from valuing individualism and self-reliance to championing group rights and collectivism, (i.e., a capitalist becomes a socialist).

As for a party changing its stereotype, we can see some signs that our parties’ brands are making small changes.  Trump for all his faults has initiated a movement for at least a portion of the Republican party to being more populist, a party of the working man as opposed to the party of business.  In reverse, the Democrats are becoming the party of big business as it caters to Wall Street, banking interests, big tech, and green energy industries. 

Republicans are beginning to appeal on a populist basis directly to the economic interests of all working people including minorities while Democrat emphasize pro criminal social justice reforms and equity appealing to division among various racial, gender and ethnic groups, and valuing the environment over economic interests of its voters.  Exit polls in the latest election show that Hispanic and Asian support for the GOP is up 10% and 17% respectively while Black support has increased 4%.  These are small changes, but not enough to provoke significant changes in voting patterns.

But what happened in Colorado? 

Colorado has been trending Democrat for some time.  Republicans carried the vote in every presidential election from 1968 to 2008 except for Clinton in 1992 when Ross Perot split the vote. Since that time, Democrats have carried the state in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 by greater margins.

I would submit that this change is the result of demographics and who is moving into and out of the state. A look at the voter rolls, shows that older voters vote Republican while younger voters vote Democrat.  One sad fact is that over the years, Republican voters are simply dying off to be replaced by younger Democrat voters.

Another reason is that agricultural and ranching populations on the Eastern Plains and Western Slope, which have been overwhelmingly Republican, are declining, being replaced by young urban dwellers in Front Range cities and tourist and recreation-based industries in the mountains.

In 2010, there were 2,371,020 voters statewide with Republicans, Democrats and Unaffiliateds splitting the vote approximately a third, a third, a third.  By election day 2022, there were an additional 1,365,509 new mostly younger voters with the split of 1,736,967 Unaffiliated, 1.058,592 Democrat and 940,970 Republican voters giving Democrats a 118,000-vote lead over Republicans.  In other words, the explanation of the trend toward Democrats in Colorado is not that the voters have changed their minds, but that Colorado has different voters.

While candidates often talk about targeting and appealing to Unaffiliated voters, we have found in past elections that being “Unaffiliated” does not mean independent, undecided, or necessarily persuadable. Analyses of prior elections show that Unaffiliated voters in a district vote almost exactly the same percentage as the split between Democrats and Republicans.  If a state has 60% Democrats and 40% Republicans, we can expect the Unaffiliated to split 60/40 as well.  So, if we allocate the Unaffiliated voters to Republicans and Democrats by their respected voter registration percentages (D-53% and R-47%), we get almost exactly the percentages that appeared in this election cycle’s statewide races for Attorney General, Treasurer and Secretary of State.

What this means is that with the current Democrat plus Democrat voting Unaffiliateds, and the slow change of voter attitudes and party stereotypes, Colorado will be a reliable blue state for a long time to come.  Look, I understand that we will see seats will flip from time to time when voting groups are close.  A Senate seat, a few House seats, and maybe even a George Bush or Donald Trump who can cobble together enough electoral college votes in close elections to secure a majority and be elected, but without a recognized change of party stereotypes, we cannot hope for a change of direction that currently favors the Democrats in Colorado.

Unfortunately, we can predict the fate of Colorado under one party Democrat rule by looking at the other Democrat one-party ruled states such as Illinois, California and New York.  As these other states have before us, Colorado will decline with increases in crime, homelessness and drug use.  Progressive government programs will require higher taxes relegating the poor to be more dependent on the largess of state government while straining the budgets of middle-class families. Because of government policies and their costs, Colorado will be a more expensive state to live in.

As new Colorado residents move in, current residents will stay for a while trying to right the system, but as time goes on with election defeat after election defeat and the inability to influence policy or drive entrenched Democrats from office, Republican voters, particularly those of retirement age, will leave the state for warmer and more politically hospitable states.  We have already seen that the populations of California, New York and Illinois are in decline and even in Colorado, with its current progressive policies population growth has slowed.

As to why younger voters lean Democrat?  That is a more complicated subject…perhaps to be examined another time. Stay tuned…