Nearly every state shifted sharply to the right in Tuesday’s election – but Colorado seems a rare exception.
The Democratic ticket, led this time by Vice Chairwoman Kamala Harris, once again won the state by double-digit margins, even as the national electorate popular vote is expected to to former President Donald Trump, the first Republican candidate to win that metric in 20 years.
A Washington Post Model by the time all the votes are counted projects that Colorado could even end up as the only state with a shift to the left since the 2020 election. As of 6:30 p.m. Friday, Harris had a lead of about 11.4 percentage points over Trump, with roughly 200,000 ballots still to be counted statewide.
President Joe Biden finished with a margin of about 13.5 percentage points in his 2020 matchup against Trump, and several projections and one poll suggest Harris could get there as well.
“Colorado was … notable for the fact that while the rest of the country moved significantly to the right – and that includes other so-called blue states like New York California and New Jersey, Colorado did not,” said Kevin Ingham, director of Aspect Strategica Democratic polling firm that helped conduct a bipartisan statewide survey of voters in the final two weeks of the election. It referred to states that Harris still won, but by much narrower margins than Biden did four years ago.
Aspect worked with New bridge strategya republican enterprise, to carry out the survey on behalf of the Colorado Polling Institute. They surveyed 822 Coloradans who had already voted or would vote in the final days of the election; the margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
It predicted a margin of 13 percentage points in favor of Harris when all the votes are counted.
Ingham attributed the state’s political stability to several factors: Colorado, by and large, is overwhelmingly white, it has the second highest rate of higher education. Among the states, and it’s not that religious. These are all demographic groups that Trump barely made any headway with nationally while winning the presidency.
The poll found that white Colorado voters supported Harris over Trump 53% to 45%, while voters of color did so 63% to 30%. College graduates went for Harris 58% to 39%. People who attend a religious service at least once a month preferred Trump 65% to 31%, while those who never attend preferred Harris 74% to 25%.
Overall, Colorado is among the states with the highest proportion of people who never attend religious services, according to. another Pew survey(All subsets of the new survey have higher margins of error than the overall survey sample size).
Ingham noted that Colorado was not uniform, of course, with the most diverse counties shifting noticeably toward Trump, even as voters of color voted overwhelmingly for Harris.
“Some of that national shift among voters of color that occurred toward Trump trickled down to Colorado,” Ingham said. “But given that voters of color make up a relatively small part of our electorate, that seemed to wash out with Harris’ gains among white voters here.”
Jeffco holds steady, but a minor surprise in Pitkin
Jefferson County was among those that continued to trend left this week. Denver’s western suburbs county. gave up another percentage point toward the Democratic side on Tuesday compared to 2020.. Harris beat Trump there by 19 percentage points.
Jeffco Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper, a Democrat, believes Harris’ plans to address affordable housing played a role in capturing voter support in Colorado’s fourth most populous county.
“A starter home is out of reach for many, and it would take 20,000 new units just to meet Jeffco’s housing demand,” Dahlkemper told The Denver Post this week. “Throughout her campaign, Vice President Harris focused on housing affordability, especially for first-time homebuyers. These solutions resonate in Jeffco, where many are feeling the housing squeeze.”
August, Harris proposed providing $25,000 up-front assistance for certain first-time homebuyers and tax incentives for first-time homebuilders. Dahlkemper said Tuesday’s outcome in Jefferson County had less to do with partisan politics and more to do with addressing people’s needs.
“As long as Democrats continue to deliver results on the issues that really matter to our community, I hope that solution-oriented leadership will prevail,” he said.
It has long been clear, however, that Jefferson is among several suburban Denver counties where Trump’s first 2020 win initiated a shift to the Democratsincluding in voting for local office. In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton led Trump in Jeffco by just under 7 percentage points.
In famously blue Pitkin County, home to dazzling Aspen, the trend was the opposite of Jeffco’s. A New York Times map showing county-by-county changes since 2020 found a 7.6-point shift to the right Tuesday in Pitkin’s presidential results.
That still meant a lopsided 44 percentage point lead for Harris over Trump, but Pitkin County Commissioner Francie Jacober suggested that the political debate over Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip moved some voters to the Republican column who normally wouldn’t have gone there.
“There are people who believe Trump has a more pro-Israel stance than Harris,” she said.
Jacober also believes that gender may have played a role in the final analysis.
“I think there are people who are convinced that Trump is stronger because he’s a man,” he said, though he added that he doesn’t share that sentiment.
Pitkin wasn’t the only mountain county that leaned to the right in its presidential vote. Eagle County leaned 5.4 points more to the Republican side on Tuesday over 2020, and Summit County made a similar 2.2-point shift, according to the Times analysis.
Denver also showed a slight swing to the right toward Trump. With vote counting still underway Friday, Harris had 77% to Trump’s 20%, a 57-point margin that was about 4 points narrower than Denver’s 2020 presidential margin.
Colorado Latinos break with national change.
Overall, Colorado voters identified immigration, abortion and housing affordability as the top issues driving their vote, according to the Colorado Polling Institute survey released this week.
While some voters prioritized the economy and the cost of living in general, it was not as pronounced as elsewhere, said Lori Weigel, principal of New Bridge Strategy. A national survey conducted by the Associated Press revealed that voters feeling squeezed by the economy were leaning toward Trump.
“I can tell you from my other work, doing focus groups around the country, that when we ask voters in other states to tell us how things are going in their state, we hear a lot about the cost of living,” Weigel said. “That wasn’t the case (here), although the cost of housing is certainly very important in Colorado.”
Colorado Latinos supported Harris to a greater extent than Latino voters nationally, which helped the vice president secure her margins in the state and counter the overall shift to the right, according to the Colorado Latino Exit Poll 2024. released Wednesday.
This survey, conducted by BSP Research on behalf of. Voices United and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, surveyed 600 Latino and Latina voters across Colorado and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Overall, Latinos in Colorado voted about 2 to 1 in favor of Harris, which is about 4 percentage points more than Latinos nationwide. Latinas voted for Harris in greater proportion than men, about 69% to 64%, a notable difference, but much smaller than that seen in other states, said pollster Gabe Sanchez.
Overall, Latinos leaned toward Harris and away from Trump compared to 2020, Sanchez said – another significant break from the national trend.
About 5% of Latino Biden voters in 2020 said they switched to Trump this year, while about 9% said they switched from Trump then to Harris now, according to the poll.
“In this general election climate, where I’m sure you’re already seeing a lot of stories talking about Latinos moving to Trump across the country and some of the other key battleground states, it’s important to note that that wasn’t the story in the state of Colorado,” Sanchez said.
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