November 03, 2014 01:59 PM UTC

ELECTION EVE UPDATE: Colorado Voter Turnout

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: A final memo from Mark Udall's campaign manager Adam Dunstone, who worked the 2010 Michael Bennet campaign, projects confidence as Democrats continue to chip away at the GOP's early ballot-return lead:

The biggest difference between this year and Sen. Bennet’s race is that Colorado now mails ballots to every registered voter in the state. This will likely increase turnout from 1.8 million to over 2 million — good news for us.

With 1.4 million ballots already processed, that means an estimated 600,000 (at the very least) are still making their way through the mail or have not yet been placed in a ballot drop box. That’s at least 1/3 of the vote that hasn’t yet come in, and as we’ve seen over the past four years, the late vote overwhelmingly benefits Democrats. 

In Colorado’s only other all mail-in ballot election, 2013, more than 39% of the votes came in the final two days of balloting. Those two days saw the disparity between Republican and Democratic votes decrease by more than 2.5 points. We expect a similar proportion of votes to be counted on Monday and Tuesday…

According to our modeling, Latinos already make up the same share of the electorate that they did in 2010 — and their percentage of the electorate will continue to grow. When all is said and done, Latinos will make up an even larger share of the electorate than they did in 2010.

23 percent of the Democrats who have voted thus far did not vote in 2010, including 17 percent who voted in 2012 but not 2010. These are your quintessential drop-off voters who traditionally don’t vote in midterm elections. This is a key number to keep an eye on, and 23% is great news for us.

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Alright, Polsters, it's time to dust off those cliches. We're going down to the wire, where we wait for the fat lady to sing about counting your chicks, blah, blah, blah.

Here's the latest update on voter turnout figures. The big question, of course, revolves around final turnout numbers. If turnout is closer to 2010, then counties such as Douglas, El Paso, and Weld, respectively, are getting close to their voter ceiling. But if turnout moves closer to 2012 numbers, then the Big Three of Arapahoe, Denver, and Jefferson counties aren't even halfway home.