August 03, 2010 12:56 AM UTC

The Most Important Number Until the Primary: Turnout

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• by: Colorado Pols

FRIDAY UPDATE: Here are the turnout numbers as of 2:45 p.m. today. It looks like a lot of voters are still holding onto their ballots:

*Party/ Ballots Returned Thus Far/ Total Active Voters/ Percent Returned

Democrats: 245,477/ 817,458/ 30%

Republicans: 269,646/ 855,667/ 32%

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Previous updates and original post after the jump

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WEDNESDAY UPDATE: The Secretary of State’s office has updated the ballot return numbers. Here they are as of about 4:00 p.m. today:

*Party/ Ballots Returned Thus Far/ Total Active Voters/ Percent Returned

Democrats: 210,201/ 817,458/ 26%

Republicans: 222,938/ 855,667/ 26%

Democrats have already voted in significantly higher numbers than in 2008 (see after the jump for more), while Republicans are almost there. There’s still a lot of ballots to go for either Party to surpass the 335,431 votes cast the last time Colorado had a competitive top-ballot Primary (Pete Coors/Bob Schaffer in 2004).

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In the last couple of weeks, polls for both the Democratic and Republican Senate races, as well as the Republican Governor’s race, have showed results that are all over the map. Those changing numbers lead us to believe that all three races are going to be relatively close.

With that in mind, the most important number for the next 8 days is going to be turnout. The general rule of thumb is that a higher turnout benefits the candidates with the best name ID — Sen. Michael Bennet on the Democratic side, and Jane Norton (Senate) and Scott McInnis (Governor) on the Republican ticket — because a larger number of voters usually means a larger number of uninformed voters, for whom name ID is really the most important issue.

As of this afternoon, here are the turnout results from the Secretary of State’s office. We’ll update these numbers on Wednesday afternoon and again on Friday afternoon (special thanks to the SOS Communications Staff for the timely updates):

*Party/ Ballots Returned Thus Far/ Total Active Voters/ Percent Returned

Democrats: 164,878/ 817,458/ 20%

Republicans: 171,236/ 855,667/ 20%

In 2006, overall primary turnout was 23%, while in 2008, overall primary turnout was 21.95%. It would appear as though we are well on our way to higher than normal turnout, which makes sense since we haven’t seen a contested statewide primary in Colorado (at the top of the ticket) since the 2004 Republican Senate race between Pete Coors and Bob Schaffer.

To give those numbers some perspective, here are the numbers for ballots cast for the top ticket race in 2008, 2006 and 2004. Pay particular attention to the 2004 Republican Senate race, which as we said above was the last competitive top-ticket Primary in Colorado:

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTING HISTORY

2008: 194,227 votes cast (Mark Udall, Senate)

2006: 142,586 votes cast (Bill Ritter, Governor)

2004: 237,140 votes cast (Ken Salazar/Mike Miles, U.S. Senate)

REPUBLICAN PRIMARY VOTING HISTORY

2008: 239,212 votes case (Bob Schaffer, Senate)

2006: 193,804 votes cast (Bob Beauprez, Governor)

2004: 335,431 votes cast (Pete Coors/Bob Schaffer, U.S. Senate)