October 25, 2010 11:59 PM UTC

Turnout Numbers Updated; Still No GOP "Wave"

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Over at DemNotes, Dan Slater runs some more historical numbers and finds a surge in voters…but with Democrats, not Republicans:

Statewide, Democrats have cast 37% of the votes to date; Republicans have cast 42% of the votes.  That’s a five-point difference between the two parties. In 2008, at the top of the Democratic surge, those numbers were even.  However, in 2006 — a good year for Colorado Democrats by any measure — Republicans outvoted Democrats by SIX points.  

Read that again: Democrats are voting early at a better clip than they did in 2006.[Pols emphasis]

Folks, we’ve been saying the same thing here for months: Don’t get caught up in the national narrative about a “Republican wave” of angry voters, because our ballots don’t just say “Vote for All Republicans” or “Vote for All Democrats.” Media outlets should be careful about blindly repeating this theory, because it’s starting to look more and more like it was always just a theory.

We’re not saying that Republicans aren’t going to vote in higher numbers than Democrats — they may — but that doesn’t exactly meet our definition of a “wave” or “surge.”

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The Colorado Secretary of State’s office has just released the latest ballot return numbers for Colorado. Click here to see the full county-by-county numbers. You can compare today’s numbers with the first batch of turnout results released on October 20.

As of October 25, 2010

443,611 Total Ballots Counted

(There are 3,282,855 total registered voters in Colorado as of Oct. 1, 2010)

Democrats: 159,882

– 15% of all registered Democrats

– 20% of “active” Democrats

Republicans: 184,982

– 17% of all registered Republicans

– 21% of “active” Republicans”

Unaffiliated: 95,926

– 9% of total registered Unaffiliated voters

– 13% of “active” Unaffiliated voters

These numbers are about double from the October 20 report, but the percentage differences aren’t changing a whole lot. If there is a massive Republican wave of voters, they’re apparently going to wait to vote at the polls. Either way, this election (like most Colorado elections) looks like it will be decided by the Unaffiliated voters — most of whom are still waiting to vote, apparently.

In 2006 (the last non-Presidential election year), 1,586,105 voters cast a ballot for a turnout rate of 62.59%. Thus far in 2010, 443,611 voters have had their ballot counted, for a turnout rate of about 14%.