Clinton’s Lead Caves; Colorado Back in Play

The Democrats’ thin advantage in Colorado, mostly based on shifting demographics, has dissipated under Hillary Clinton’s collapsing national campaign. As described in The Buzz of September 2, Where is Clinton? Campaign Defensive as it Enters Labor Day Weekend, she lost control of the national narrative in late August, culminating in her illness on November 11.

In mid-August, Colorado was considered a safe Clinton state as she had a 10-point lead over Donald Trump. Clinton’s campaign believed it and moved advertising dollars to other states before Labor Day just as Donald Trump and Libertarian Gary Johnson began airing ads.

Colorado still needs some reliable polls, but the latest reported has Trump up 4 points, or Clinton up 5. The current RealClearPolitics average is Clinton by 3.7 percent (42.7% to 39.0%). Huffington Post poll of polls has the spread at 5.8 (43.6% to 37.8%) and Nate Silver’s 538 places Clinton ahead by 3 points (45.2% to 42.1%).

Note the Emerson College poll is a robo poll with no cell phones included. The SurveyMonkey data is a non-probability sample that uses participants in SurveyMonkey polls and weights the data to construct a representative, but not random, sample of Colorado likely voters.