Denver Growth on a Tear

Denver has retaken the lead as the largest county in the state, sweeping past El Paso County by 8,000 residents, according to the 2015 U.S. Census Bureau population estimates of July 2015.

After a couple of decades of stagnant population growth reflecting suburbanization, Denver grew an extraordinary 82,387 residents since the 2010 census, a nearly 14 percent increase. The city now has 682,545 residents as of last July, up 18,582 in one year (since the July 2014 estimate).

The City and County is the leader in the statewide population surge that has made Colorado the second fastest growing in the country. (Colorado now 5.5 million people, up 101,000 since 2014, mostly from new residents moving to the state.)

Denver’s growth leads the seven-county metro area, with Arapahoe and Adams in second and third positions. Boulder and Jefferson counties lag the field of larger counties. Broomfield, as a small community, only added 9,000 residents in the five years, but its rate of growth of 16.4% was the highest of larger counties. Denver was second with 13.7%.

Metro population at slightly over 3 million is about 56 percent of the state’s population of 5.16 million, a small increase during the last decade. Denver represents 22 percent of the total.

See study here

Colorado Republicans Help Stop Trump – 9KUSA, Balance of Power

Colorado’s delegation of unpledged delegates may be a part of the block that keeps Donald Trump from 1,237 delegates and creates a contested convention. As of now, Trump needs 53 percent of the remaining 944 delegates.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz

Colorado has 37 delegates of which 24 are unpledged prior to the April 8 congressional and April 9 state conventions.

Colorado could potentially add 25 unpledged delegates to the convention total, making Trump’s task more difficult.

The effort to stop Trump has been ongoing at state-level delegations, with battles to identify and recruit supports and party representatives as delegates to pledge to anyone but Trump or stay unpledged until the first vote.

Republican leaders have also started an effort to discredit Trump’s argument that if he’s close to 1,237 delegates, he must be given the nomination. They point out more Republicans have voted against Trump than for him, his unfavorability rating is sky-high, he loses in every credible poll to Hillary Clinton, and most importantly the rules are the rules.

See:
9News: Balance of Power: The fight for Colorado’s GOP delegates
Politico: Shadow campaign to deny Trump his delegates begins
Politico: Insiders to Trump: No majority, no nomination
Politico: Meet South Carolina’s anti-Trump double agents
The Buzz: 9KUSA: Four reasons Cruz leads in Colorado’s pledged delegates

9KUSA – Four Reasons Cruz Leads in Colorado’s Pledged Delegates

In an interview with 9KUSA’s Brandon Rittiman for the weekend Balance of Power show, I pointed out how ironic it was that Colorado Republicans who got no attention from presidential candidates at the March 1 party caucuses may now see one or more candidates before their April party conventions. Colorado’s unpledged delegates join a handful of other states that did not hold primaries or preference polls at caucuses. Delegates and their preferences (pledged or unpledged, and if pledged, to whom) will be declared during the next two weeks.

Ted Cruz
Photo: AP

Analyses of Republican Party delegates going to the April 8 and 9 congressional district and state convention indicate Ted Cruz has a lead among the approximate third of the delegates that have pledged. He has 22 percent to Donald Trump’s ten percent. John Kasich is not a factor with one percent and others who have dropped out of the race have three percent.

Why does Cruz have an advantage in Colorado?

• Cruz has been winning small caucus turnout states in the West. He won Utah, Idaho and Wyoming (they had preference polls). The smaller turnout electorate is more conservative.
• The lack of a Colorado preference poll helped Cruz because it reduced attention that could have attracted Donald Trump’s newer, less frequent party participants.
• Cruz is now unifying the conservative and establishment wings of the party. These are the two groups in Colorado that have been the most influential. Four years ago, Rick Santorum, the religious conservative, and Mitt Romney, the establishment candidate, were a close one and two in the caucus results.
• Cruz has been more prepared longer for the battle in each state to identify, recruit and place delegates. Trump has just stepped up his delegate hunt effort.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to stop Trump from reaching 1,237 delegates before the convention and then being ready to win on a second or later ballot when pledged delegates are mostly free to vote their preference. Colorado has 37 delegates, with about 27 unpledged as of today. Having such a larger number of Cruz and unpledged delegates may make Colorado a major factor in creating a contested convention.

Sanders Wins Big, But Nothing Changes

Democratic voters in three western states gave Bernie Sanders huge wins the last week, but the headlines and lead paragraphs of the coverage remain: “Sanders wins, Clinton leads.” And, there is no expectation the picture will change.

Hillary Clinton’s delegate lead is so significant, counting super delegates, that Sanders would have to win two-thirds of the remaining delegates to stop her. And unfortunately for him, the race is heading to big states with large minority and unionized Democratic Party constituencies better for Clinton, tougher for Sanders.

Bernie Sanders
Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli

His win in mostly White, mostly small caucus states of Alaska (82%), Hawaii (70%) and Washington (73%), while impressive, are not significant enough to shift the calculation that Clinton is still the presumptive nominee. Sanders, in fact, has hit five in a row, counting Idaho and Utah a week earlier. All five were caucus states with very few voters participating (26,000 people voted in Washington, 33,000 in Hawaii and 530 in Alaska). In fact, Clinton leads with 2 million more voters than Sanders.

Clinton has 1,712 delegates, 72 percent of the goal of 2,383. She only needs 671 more, or 33 percent of the 2,049 delegates still available. Sanders, on the other hand, needs 1,379 delegates, or 67 percent of the remaining delegates – short of complete Clinton collapse in the upcoming expensive state primaries, a very unlikely scenario.

The next contests will be in a primary in Wisconsin April 5, the Wyoming caucus April 7 and the New York primary April 19. Sanders did not win Massachusetts, Ohio or Indiana. He will need extraordinary wins in the final northeast primaries and then super delegates to shift position. Good luck.

Read The Buzz: Clinton extends lead, Trump faces resistance – KOA interview with April Zesbaugh and Steffan Tubbs

Pew Charitable Trusts Conducts Voter Study; Ciruli Associates Provides Opinion Data

In 2014, Colorado conducted its first all mail-back partisan election. Pew Charitable Trusts, as a part of a commitment to support more accessible and convenient election procedures in the country, partnered with Ciruli Associates and researchers from the Rice University and other colleges to study Colorado’s mail-back procedures to gauge voter sense of ballot security and convenience and to study cost efficiency.

The study included a large voter telephone survey conducted by Ciruli Associates during the mail-back voting period and shortly after Election Day. More than 1,500 individuals were contacted. As reported last week by Pew, voters stated satisfaction with mail-back voting, but for a variety of reasons, two-thirds (64%) returned the ballots in person. Personal return was convenient in drop boxes or voter centers, and voters were more secure ensuring their ballot was personally delivered.

See Pew Charitable Trusts study here

Read:
9KUSA: Voting changes reap positive results
ColoradoPeakPolitics: Pew: Data in new Pew election costs study stinks

Democratic Primary Voters Have Low Interest in Foreign Policy

Terrorism is a problem for Bernie Sanders. In any question concerning a new terrorist attack, Sanders manages to work in that he voted against the Iraq War (and by the way Hillary Clinton voted for it). In other words, not only is he against boots on the ground, but his policy would be even more passive than President Obama’s, who basically, when forced to discuss his strategy, introduces the subject with “ISIL is not an existential threat” (unlike global warming).

Obama is again taking criticism for his ineffectual Syrian strategy from the left and right foreign policy establishment. But, the one group neither Sanders nor the President needs to worry about is rank and file Democrats.

Democratic primary voters rate the economy as most important priority, with terrorism in second place, but ahead of their candidates’ two favorite topics: health care and climate change.

Hillary Clinton clearly owns the terrorism issue in the Democratic Party. Sanders generally is on the defense. But Clinton must guard against breaking too far right of the Administration or appear to be criticizing it.

Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump outbid themselves with extreme statements about monitoring Muslim Americans, excluding Muslim immigrants and introducing illegal interrogation methods. But, they are reflecting their primary electorate, which rates terrorism and national security the top issue.

Colorado Independent Voters Are Not a Monolith

Colorado has 1.3 million voters who decline to state a party. It is Colorado’s largest and fastest growing political preference. They are not all centrists or moderates in their views. Like all voters, they range from liberal to conservative in proportions that reflect the communities they live in and their personal political choices and histories.

Recent voter surveys conducted by Ciruli Associates in Pueblo and Denver, Colorado, show that, although both communities prefer Democratic officeholders, self-described moderates dominate independents in both cities, but after moderates, Denver’s unaffiliated are much more likely to be liberal (37%) and Pueblo’s conservatives (35%).

Independents’ left-to-right ideological preferences undermine the theory that allowing them to vote in party primaries will help moderate the views of polarized partisans. In fact, in the most recent presidential primaries, independent voters have flooded into the elections to support far left, anti-establishment Bernie Sanders and bombastic populist Donald Trump – hardly what most would describe as a moderating influence. Of course, there may be other reasons to incorporate the independents (or unaffiliated voters in Colorado) into the partisan primary system. Voters may have a chance to weigh in on it this November.