June 13, 2013 01:06 PM UTC

The Key Takeaway from the Quinnipiac Poll: Hick Needs Liberals

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• by: Colorado Pols

When Weld County and friends started publicly talking about seceding from Colorado a week ago, it brought up (again) an important point about Colorado statewide politics: The electoral power in Colorado is concentrated in the Denver Metro area, and that's not changing anytime soon. Some rural Coloradans voiced concern that their opinions were not being considered by the legislature and Gov. John Hickenlooper, but any policy decision made at the behest of rural Colorado would ignore the fact that 80-90% of Colorado voters live along the Front Range and in the Metro Denver area.

The new Quinnipiac University Poll that we discussed this morning has a tantalizing headline that doesn't quite work out when you consider the aforementioned voter dynamics. The headline, "Early Look Shows Close Governor's Race in 2014," makes sense when you look at the statewide poll results (just 45% of respondents say that Hickenlooper deserves re-election), but the problem emerges when you dive into those numbers a bit more. Forget about arguments on sampling, for a moment, because there is a more obvious problem in the way the results are presented by area; and when you take a closer look, the key to victory for Hickenlooper in 2014 actually lies with liberal voters…

QUNNIPIAC QUESTION: "Do you feel that John Hickenlooper deserves to be re-elected, or do you feel that he does not deserve to be re-elected?"

Here's why this is so important: The "Denver/Boulder" and "Arapahoe/Jefferson" areas of Colorado represent a sizable percentage of the overall voter base. In 2012, these four counties alone contributed 1,053,187 votes for either President Barack Obama or challenger Mitt Romney. There were a total of 2.5 million votes cast for President in Colorado in 2012, and D/B/A/J accounted for a whopping 42% of those votes.

In other words, if the results of this question translated to actual votes in 2014, Hickenlooper would be in pretty good shape. In fact, it's not in the rest of the state where Hickenlooper would need to perform better — it's in Denver and Boulder. Obama won Denver and Boulder with better than 70% of the vote in 2012, which is critical to winning statewide because of how many total votes (not percentage) represented there. Obama's success in Denver/Boulder was worth 347,109 total votes, or about 220,000 more than Romney. Those two counties alone brought Obama 28% of the way to the 1.25 million votes needed to capture Colorado.

Hickenlooper is doing well if he can stay above 50% in Arapahoe/Jefferson, but he absolutely must do better than 55% in Denver/Boulder. There aren't enough winnable votes in rural Colorado to make up the difference if he doesn't perform well in the heart of the state. Hick's position on issues like the death penalty and fracking will be critical to his success — but those positions need to line up with the right section of voters.