Tuesday, September 23, 2014

New Polls – Tighter Races

Two new polls since Labor Day added confusion and some suspense to Colorado’s top two races. Quinnipiac and the USA Today/Suffolk polls put challenger Cory Gardner ahead of incumbent senator, Mark Udall. The same two polls split on the governor’s race, with Quinnipiac claiming incumbent John Hickenlooper is ten points behind Bob Beauprez and USA Today/Suffolk claiming Hickenlooper is two up.

Due to the spreads in the Quinnipiac poll results, both races move to toss ups among national handicappers and polling aggregators.

Needless to say, the Democrats criticized the sampling of the Quinnipiac survey and claimed the leads of their two candidates were maintained.

The senate results are the most interesting since both polls, done by university research units, claim Udall, after nearly being declared the prohibitive favorite to win, is now in trouble and may not have a lead in the race.

Obviously, more public polling data will be needed to sort out the race, but for now the narrative has changed. It provides a burst of momentum for Gardner and reopens speculation on the impact of growing dissatisfaction for Washington since President Obama’s September 9, 2014 prime time White House speech on the war in the Middle East.

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