{"id":39766,"date":"2022-06-27T12:17:44","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T18:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/unaffiliated-voters-give-colorado-republicans-turnout-edge-ahead-of-primary-election\/"},"modified":"2022-06-27T18:17:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T18:17:44","slug":"unaffiliated-voters-give-colorado-republicans-turnout-edge-ahead-of-primary-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/unaffiliated-voters-give-colorado-republicans-turnout-edge-ahead-of-primary-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Unaffiliated voters give Colorado Republicans turnout edge ahead of primary election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Election
Election workers process ballots at the Arapahoe County Elections Facility in Littleton, on Nov. 3, 2020. (Carl Payne for Colorado Newsline)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

With a handful of closely contested primary races on Colorado\u2019s June 28 primary ballot, unaffiliated voters are poised to give Republicans their first statewide turnout advantage since 2016, data released by state elections officials shows.<\/p>\n

As of Friday, 273,555 Coloradans had voted in the GOP primary election through their mail-in ballot or in-person voting, according to preliminary numbers from the Colorado secretary of state\u2019s office. That\u2019s a higher total than the 255,830 returned Democratic ballots, and represents a Republican turnout of about 28.6% compared to 23.9% on the Democratic side.<\/p>\n

Barring a drastic surge in Democratic returns, Colorado Republicans are on track to record a higher primary turnout in an even-year election for the first time in six years. Colorado held its 2016 presidential caucuses in March before voters weighed in on down-ballot state and congressional races in a June primary, with the GOP\u2019s U.S. Senate primary the only contested statewide race.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a similar situation in 2022: None of the five Colorado Democrats holding statewide office faces even a single primary challenger in their reelection campaign, while multiple Republican candidates are battling it out in the races for governor, U.S. Senate and secretary of state, along with several contested House primaries.<\/p>\n

In each of the last three election cycles, the party boasting the higher ballot-return percentage in Colorado\u2019s June primary has sustained that turnout advantage in the general election in the fall, and after lagging behind Republicans in 2016, Democrats bested the GOP in 2018 and 2020. Detailed ballot return data wasn\u2019t released during Colorado\u2019s first statewide primary using the mail-in ballot system in 2014.<\/p>\n

\"(Colorado
(Colorado Newsline)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

This year\u2019s preliminary ballot-return data show that unaffiliated voters are largely responsible for the GOP\u2019s turnout edge so far. Nearly 30% of the Republican primary ballots returned as of June 24 were cast by voters not affiliated with any party \u2013 double the number reported at the same point prior to the state\u2019s previous midterm primary election in 2018. Colorado law allows the state\u2019s 1.7 million unaffiliated voters \u2013 a larger group than either its 1.1 million active registered Democrats or its 956,904 registered Republicans \u2013 to vote in either party\u2019s primary election in a given year, but not both.<\/p>\n

In the 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses much of Colorado\u2019s Western Slope, far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert is favored to win reelection but faces a GOP primary challenger in state Sen. Don Coram of Montrose.<\/p>\n

With Tuesday\u2019s primary likely representing the best shot of unseating Boebert, nearly 4,000 registered Democrats in the 3rd District have changed their registrations to unaffiliated since the beginning of the year, according to data <\/a>from the secretary of state\u2019s office. And amid pleas <\/a>from centrist pundits for unaffiliated voters to cast a ballot in the GOP primary, \u201cwhere their voice will be the loudest in denouncing radicalism,\u201d there are signs the gambit has picked up steam in the 3rd District.<\/p>\n

Unaffiliated voters in Mesa County, the district\u2019s largest population center, have returned Republican ballots at nearly quadruple the statewide rate, and the data show similar patterns in the district\u2019s La Plata, Delta, Montrose and Gunnison counties.<\/p>\n

Citing the possibility of such efforts by Democrats, several far-right Colorado Republicans filed a lawsuit<\/a> earlier this year challenging the state\u2019s open-primary system, arguing the party has a right to choose its candidates \u201cwithout interference by those who are not members of the party and have chosen not to affiliate with the party.\u201d A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit<\/a> in April.<\/p>\n

Other contested Republican primaries<\/a> include matchups between former Parker mayor Greg Lopez and University of Colorado Regent-at-Large Heidi Ganahl in the governor\u2019s race, and state Rep. Ron Hanks and Denver construction executive Joe O\u2019Dea for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. In the race for secretary of state, indicted<\/a> Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, an election conspiracist, faces former Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Pam Anderson and nonprofit executive Mike O\u2019Donnell.<\/p>\n

Incumbent Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said Friday that Coloradans should rely on trusted sources like state and county websites for timely and accurate elections-night reporting. The ballot return totals released by county clerks and Griswold\u2019s office in the run-up to election night are only raw counts of processed ballots, not election results.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to remember that election night results are never final results in Colorado. After election day, military and oversees voters return their ballots, signature discrepancies can be fixed, and bipartisan audits are conducted to determine statistical confidence in the results,\u201d Griswold said in a statement. \u201cWhile county clerks begin to process ballots prior to election day, which allows for a high percentage of results to be reported on election night, there is quite a bit of activity that occurs after election day.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

nonaffiliated voters casting GOP ballots in Rep. Boebert\u2019s 3rd District<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[981,266,28,2972,367,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-3rd-congressional-district","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-primary","tag-u-s-rep-lauren-boebert","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39766"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}