CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 16, 2010 10:36 PM UTC
57 Comments
Why does Polis have 3-1 odds when he doesn’t have an opponent? Wouldn’t he be EVEN, like Suthers?
It’s slightly more likely that someone decent could beat Polis in a primary than someone decent running and beating Suthers (now that most potential Dems have said they’ll stay out). We say slightly, because it doesn’t look like either will happen.
But you may be right – maybe their odds should be equal.
Thanks for explaining that. If he did have a primary opponent, those odds seem about right.
Pols doesn’t know the district or the sentiment of Democrats in the district.
It is one of those estimates that you figure Pols divines by looking in the toilet bowl at his latest creation. It appears plausible from a distance but on closer scrutiny it dissolves into muddy messiness. It is something Pols pulled from places unseen except by the colonoscopy camera.
Polis is getting better at his job and wouldn’t have any problems holding off a challenge from another Will Shafroth lightweight and a Tea Party extremist.
Put a fork in this race. Polis wins by a record margin. Mark Udall has left the building.
I mean, I had to read that with my own mind.
tell me to quit swishing it around with my hands when I was young. It was one of those fixations that I grew out of unlike Pols and his continual haranguing about Polis and his money.
at odds several months ago, when the ‘lack of a message’ or ‘real campaign staff’ were cited as his weak spots.
Now after his message has become clearer as the Anti-PAC / Corporate Candidate, he has hired some seasoned campaign staff, including 2 from Team Obama (and wisely got rid of an assclown), has been shown in recent polling to be pulling closer to Norton while Bennet has fallen farther behind by double digits, and by the way, he got the endorsement of the 2 largest unions and a majority of the State legislators. Yet he is still exactly at the same spot of 20-1?
I expect you to come down hard on Romanoff for not raising as much money as Bennet, but not a single point difference with all of these factors?
Actually, after the Pat Caddell fiasco and a lousy fundraising quarter, he should be doing worse.
Because, if nothing else, there’s no way at his current financial pace that he’ll be able to go on TV with a serious ad buy. None of the things you mention, Wade, will matter at all if Romanoff cannot go big on TV. Without a serious TV buy, YOU CANNOT WIN A MAJOR STATEWIDE ELECTION.
That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact — show us the previous candidate for Governor or Senate who has ever even won a primary in Colorado.
Maybe that will change. Maybe Romanoff will raise a lot of money this quarter. If that happens, then we’ll change the odds. But until then, he’ll stay where he is.
My guess is Bennet will beat Romanoff in March. Maybe by 1 vote – but Bennet will come in first. And when that happens, the primary is over.
so I wont offer to. But I think Romanoff will come out ahead in the number of delgates coming out of caucus.
Because I have been working so closely with Denver and the immediate suburbs (Adams, Jeffco, and Arapahoe) getting our caucuses and district assemblies organized I’ve had the opportunity to measure the level of support amongst likely caucus-goers in all of these counties (albeit some more than others) and it’s pretty solidly for Andrew. And these 4 counties make up over 45% of the delagtes to the staste assembly.
Having said that, I haven’t had the opportunity to get out of metro-Denver lately so I don’t have any way to gage the rest of the state.
Likely caucus goers are backing Romanoff by a big margin — and probably even more so outstate than in the metro area. Remember, though, delegates are unpledged at every step, so the vote could shift through county assemblies and finally at the state assembly.
I mean, we vote in a primary anyway, right?
And the delegates are unpledged.
So why do we do the whole caucus thing?
The process reflects the mood of the party, not necessarily that of the electorate as a whole.
More importantly, it begins the winnowing process for districts with multiple candidates. When there are only two candidates running, they will likely both make the primary unless one is totally lacking in…well, let’s leave it at lacking.
If there are 3 or more candidates for the same seat, the caucus/assembly proicess usully allows 2 people to be nominated and gives the 3rd or more the opportunity to see if they were at least somewhat successful at gathering supporters and then can the assess the wisdom of attempting to petition on the ballot.
As has been rightly pointed out here, doing very well at Caucus is a small victory, but it is a vitory nonetheless that bigger gains can be buiult upon if marshalled correctly.
There will be a primary and Romanoff doesn’t have enough money to buy good TV.
Nobody gives a shit what the party activists do at the convention. See Miles, Mike vs. Salazar, Ken.
The dynamics there was very different. First, and probably most importnat, Salazar had far most name ID than Miles. Romanoff vs. Bennet is nearly the opposite.
Also, Miles represented stark contrast to Salazar. He was viewed at the far more “progressive” candidate where Salazar was almost termed “conservative” by camparison. Romanoff and Bennet are boat at the about the same point in the spectrum, maybe slightly more one way or the other on individual issues.
Top line doesn’t mean anything in Colorado any more.
Primaries are decided by voters, not the party activists. Sorry to say, to get to the voters you need a lot of TV, which means you need buckets of money.
People who support the guy/gal with less money always undervalue its importance.
Which is what Romanoff supporters who ignore the financial reality continue to miss. It’s not that Romanoff isn’t raising as much money as Bennet – he was never going to outraise Bennet. The problem is that Romanoff isn’t raising enough money to be able to win. Those are two completely different discussions. Romanoff can still win if he is outspent by Bennet, but he cannot win if he doesn’t even have the cash for the basics.
But you have to act fast.
That is some investment.
What RedGreen said.
at odds several months ago, when the ‘lack of a message’ or ‘real campaign staff’ were cited as his weak spots.
Now after his message has become clearer as the Anti-PAC / Corporate Candidate, he has hired some seasoned campaign staff, including 2 from Team Obama (and wisely got rid of an assclown), has been shown in recent polling to be pulling closer to Norton while Bennet has fallen farther behind by double digits, and by the way, he got the endorsement of the 2 largest unions and a majority of the State legislators. Yet he is still exactly at the same spot of 20-1?
I expect you to come down hard on Romanoff for not raising as much money as Bennet, but not a single point difference with all of these factors?
I see Bennet as a less than 50/50 shot to be re-elected, but it may make sense for Norton to be a bit lower than he is, because there’s an off-chance she’ll lose the nomination. How can I tell if the Big Line’s odds give Bennet/Romanoff better odds than Norton/Wiens/Buck; how do you add these up?
about the methodology used in the Big Line. But he’s still taking bets!
To make the lines statistically accurate. It would also be hard to do because you have to factor in primaries, etc.
For example, we think both Norton and Wiens are more likely to win the GOP primary than Romanoff is to win the Democratic primary. But we also think Romanoff would have a great chance to win the general election if he were to somehow win the primary, which is why his odds are better than Buck (who we don’t think can win either the primary OR the general).
Similarly, Democrats must sit atop the Treasurer and CD-4 Line; they don’t have to go through a primary and they are incumbents in races without overwhelming natural voter registration advantages. You can’t say that Stapleton, Hasan or Ament are more likely to beat Kennedy in the Treasurer’s race when it’s too early to tell which one of them will even win the primary.
There are some cases where there is a competitive primary and all candidates from the same Party are on the top of the line. In the 2006 CD-5 race (Rep. Doug Lamborn currently holds that seat), there were six Republican candidates and only one Democrat. But because CD-5 has an enormous Republican voter registration advantage, whoever won the Republican primary was almost certain to win the general election; in that case, we listed the Republicans in the order we thought they were running in the primary (CD-2 was the same way in 2008, but with Democrats in control).
It might make more sense to do lines by Party affiliation before the primary, but then The Big Line would get a little unwieldy and long. We prefer to do it this way, which provides an overall snapshot of each particular race.
as soon as that dude finds out what office he’s running for you could up his odds.
We should all go out there and buy him a steak dinner, just to show him there are no hard feelings….
That would imply he had been elected originally.
that for the 3 GOP candidates for Treasurer to all make the primary ballot, they each need to get 30% of the delegate vote. Not likely.
Of course, you can petition on the statewide primary ballot, but that’s nearly impossible.
Pols – you are smoking crack if you think Hasan will make the ballot at the convention.
There will be no 3-way primary.
But I’ll bet Ali makes the ballot. He’s very personable and has tons of good contacts throughout the party. Plus they love his family money.
It’s not that hard to petition onto the ballot. And Hasan has the money.
Like Pols says, not that hard to get if you can pay for them.
Marc Holtzman had the money, but couldn’t make the ballot.
David T. – Hasan has very few delegate contacts within the party. Trust me.
RG – 1,500 verified Republican signatures per Congressional District.
Do Mom and Dad Hasan really want to spend Bruce Benson-type money to get their son on the ballot for a Treasurer’s race?
No, they don’t. He won’t make the ballot.
Readjust the line.
What matters based on race after race after race is contributed dollars. Remember that Jared raised over a million (then added the loose change he found in his couch). Candidates that are largely self-funded almost always lose.
Once again, I have to remind you, that while Polis brought in $1.3 million ($25 of that donated by me) he contributed just under $6 million of his own money. Check it out: http://www.opensecrets.org/rac…
So while it may be true that Jared Polis is an exception to your rule, his candidacy was certainly largely self-funded.
But what’s a million here or there?
That doesn’t make him a bad guy or give him an asterisk on his record, but it’s just not disputable that his self-financing won that race.
In the 2008 CD-2 primary, the candidates were raising millions of dollars. Joan Fitz-Gerald raised and spent $1.8 million, Will Shafroth $1.5 million, and Jared Polis more than $6 million.
The $1 million that Polis raised had virtually nothing to do with his victory in that primary. In a very close race, it was the $5 million + that Polis spent out of his own pocket that got him elected.
Tom Wiens obviously needs to raise a lot of money in order to win the GOP nomination this year, but the fact that he enters 2010 with not much less in the bank than Jane Norton is a definite plus.
And his self-funding was a part of that. My point is that self-funding on top of great fundraising is successful, but self-funding with little fundraising rarely wins a race.
That’s why I say the fundraising is the key metric at present. If self-funding alone won seats Ali Hasan would be a state senator right now.
Polis was able to raise that much because he was able to self-fund to that extent. He was also already an elected official and a serious candidate, so your comparison with Hasan doesn’t make sense, because he was neither.
Your mind is made up about Polis and whether his overwhelming amount of self-funding tilted the election, but put this another way: If Polis hadn’t self-funded to that extent, would he have won? The answer is no, and anyone, including Robert Becker, will tell you that. The same is true of Wiens at this point. It doesn’t mean he isn’t a viable candidate.
There’s a great discussion of it in Freakanomics. In the vast majority of self-funded cases the candidate lost – even though they way outspent their opponent. If you get a chance, read that chapter in Freakanomics.
David, you’re always recommending these things that are incredibly popular household names like they’re some secret little bistro you only like to tell friends about.
Self-funding doesn’t work when you’re trying to take out an incumbent, or when it’s basically a vanity campaign, or you have no public policy experience — and those are the bulk of self-funding campaigns on the books, so of course the vast majority lose.
With the exception of the middle term, which is up for debate, Polis was none of these. Neither was Michael Bloomberg, and there’s not a soul alive who would dispute the fact that he bought his election, either.
As to Avatar, you can claim all you want that it sucked – the box office says differently.
David, you’re just making shit up here. I thought Avatar was fantastic. So did hundreds of millions of people by the time you tipped us off to go see it. But you’re right about Wiens — we shall see. Time will tell.
for actual fundraising, if you subtract his own out of pocket. JFG outraised him by a half million–certainly not small change in a House race.
She’s unveiling her first tv ad tomorrow morning.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/th…
Though, to be fair, it could be one of those youtube/campaign site “tv” ads where she doesn’t actually buy the airtime, but gets free coverage because she has an ad.
The day before Obama comes to town (I’m guessing this ad goes after Bennet and Obama’s connection and completely ignore her fellow primary opponents.) That said, I’d also guess that this ad is to counter Buck’s 527 group that had that $350K ad buy last month.
We don’t know how much was actually spent.
But you’re probably right about both parts.
After all, it’s sort of off season right now so $350K can buy a lot of airtime right now. I wonder how much they have spent.
It will interchange Bennet with Reid/Pelosi and the socialization of ‘merica.
It will show Bennet & Obama together- smiling, but it won’t be a happy message.
And the overall will be something like tax and spend us into giant debt D’s are at it again…. gotta get Obama out of Colorado, gotta get Bennet out of the Senate, etc
Other than the “paid for” and the picture of Norton it could be a Romanoff ad.
“… and he wants Michael Bennet to be your senator. Can we take the risk?”
Norton’s spox might want to stay away from referencing his candidate in pink. You know these guys won’t hesitate to bring back back the Pink Lady.