October 24, 2010 04:25 PM UTC

New Senate Poll: Buck 47% - Bennet 47%

• 5 Comments
• by: H-man

The Denver Post/9News poll, conducted from Tuesday October 19th through Thursday October 21st was released this morning. http://www.greeleytribune.com/…  The Poll, conducted by Survey USA, shows Ken Buck with 47%, Michael Bennet with 47%, others with 5% and 1% undecided.  It is the first poll where Michael Bennet has polled as high as 47% of the vote.

To put the poll in perspective, the initial poll following the August 10th primary, conducted by Rasmussen on August 11th, had Buck leading Bennet 46% to 41%.  The previous Survey USA poll, released five weeks ago, had Buck leading Bennet 49% to 45%.  The results of the most recent polling is as follows:

Poll            survey released Buck Bennet Unsure

Rasmussen 10-14 10-16 47 45 4

Fox 10-16 10-19 46 45 4

Ipsos 10-15 to 10-17 10-19 48 45  

SurveyUSA 10-19 to 10-21 10-24 47 47 1

So what do we know?  

The race is closer than the 5 point race I thought it was and it will come down to turnout.  Buck appears to be ahead by about 1%.

Is that good news for Dems? Sort of.  

It appears that the turnout in Colorado is running very strong for Republicans.  That is contrary to the recent ColoradoPols diary which relied on an article written by Michael Bennet’s brother’s magazine for solace.  The Atlantic, quoted in the diary concerning the release of early voting statistics notes:

Democrats are happy with early vote totals in general, but the news appears grim in Colorado, where Republicans have requested and returned more ballots than Democrats. However, a look behind the numbers shows something slightly different.

There is no Republican surge/tsunami/wave/upwelling/flood/what-have-you.

Democrats are “losing” statewide, but they’re losing at a pace that is similar to the pace they were losing in 2008, when they won the state. Democrats say that their voter rolls have shrunk, generally, because they’ve tended to them well — and because 50,000 voters have moved out of state.

A few points: there are more Republicans on the permanent absentee list, so it doesn’t surprise either Democrats or Republicans that the total number of ballots returned will favor Republicans. However, of regular midterm voters, Democrats are casting ballots at a slightly higher rate than Republicans…

Here are the facts:

% Active reg. 08 % 08 early vote Active reg. 10 % 10 early vote

Democrats 32.9 37.7 32.8 36.5

Republicans 33.2 35.9 35.4 41.2

Unaffil./Others 33.9 26.4 31.8 22.3

The Dem % of early votes is down by 1.2% and the Republican % of early votes is up by 5.3% for a net pick up of 6.5% of early voting over 2008.  That is a wave and it is not similar to 2008.  Denying the wave is just Dem happy talk.

To be more granular, here are the results of the nine largest counties in Colorado by active voter population in early voting:

County Active voters (K) Dem/Republican 10 Margin

Jefferson 295 Republican 1,093

El Paso 287 Republican 6,614

Denver 268 Dem 5,360

Arapahoe 268 Republican 1,557

Adams 166 Dem 1,562

Larimer 164 Republican 533

Boulder 160 Dem 3,271

Douglas 157 Republican 4,286

Weld 113 Republican 1,570

Total 1,878 Republican +5,460

If the Republicans get out the vote in the large population areas of Colorado in significantly larger numbers than the Dems, as the early indications suggest they are doing, I still see Buck winning by two or three percent.