October 24, 2010 09:24 PM UTC

The Tightest Race(s) in America

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• by: Colorado Pols

As 9NEWS’ Adam Schrager reports, all the presumptions about how this long U.S. Senate campaign would unfold, the unknown millions of dollars, the infighting on both sides, and the most intense media warfare in the history of Colorado–from TV to talk radio to this blog–have led to:

Colorado’s candidates for U.S. Senate are tied in a new 9NEWS/Denver Post poll with just over a week to go until the votes are counted on Election Day.

The phone poll of 621 likely voters conducted by Survey USA from Oct. 19 to Oct. 21 shows both Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) and Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck (R-Colorado) with support of 47 percent.

Five percent of those surveyed say they support another candidate and one percent remains undecided. The margin of error for the poll is 4 percent.

Three weeks ago, Buck led Bennet in the last 9NEWS/Denver Post poll by 5 percentage points, 48-43, primarily on a huge 19-point edge (53-34 percent) among self-described independent voters. That same voting bloc now supports Bennet over Buck, 46-44 percent.

Men are supporting Buck by a 53-42 percent margin while women are supporting Bennet by a 53-40 percent margin.

This poll shows again the continuing downward trajectory for GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck, emerging as the biggest story of this October election season. Now down thirteen points with women, with the aggregate weight of stories about Buck’s “woman problems” added to the host of other issues he has “Buckpedaled”–not to mention the firm establishment of “Buckpedal” as the defining verb of the race, once it appeared on Meet the Press we’d say it was canonized–Buck is now losing among decisive independent voters, too. Buck has failed to respond adequately to what has proven to be a withering focus on his strident social conservatism, and the weakness of his response left him vulnerable to larger questions from independent voters about his integrity.

It is exactly what we told you would happen.

In other SurveyUSA polling news, John Hickenlooper is still going to be the next Governor, so please stop fretting. Even without the ten-point lead Hickenlooper shows in this poll over Tom Tancredo, Tancredo does not have the fieldable resources to compete with the Democratic ballot chase down the stretch: it’s why we’ve never gotten worked up about this race since Scott McInnis’ collapse. That, and our abiding faith that the people of Colorado just won’t do something as absurd and calamitous as elect Tancredo Governor. The other statewide races, though, are very close, with Democrats feeling good about the tightening numbers generally–and a continuing hope pollsters are making assumptions about “likely voters” that won’t materialize.

For our purposes, this poll tracks close enough to our Big Line to necessitate no changes. Which we feel pretty good about. Everything depends now, all the way down the ticket, on the field operations now chasing down every ballot. The success of those field efforts–not the polls, and decreasing with each passing day now the opportunity for new revelations to affect races as thousands of ballots are marked–will decide these elections, and it’s going down to the wire in what will remain a decidedly purple Colorado on November 3rd. And with the top of the GOP ticket in disarray, and Buck in apparent freefall, Colorado Democrats have an opportunity to close the deal on an election night that could shock the conventional wisdom, and defy national trends.

This next week, folks. On both sides. This is why you do politics.