Notable Recent Colorado Polling

Denver Post-Survey USA polls released Sunday and today make a variety of points worth noting, with the last day of voting a week from tomorrow and many ballots already cast in Colorado.

The race between Buck and Bennet has reached a dead tie. The downticket races for Secretary of State and State Treasurer, and to a lesser extent Attorney-General, have such a large share of voters who haven't considered the races that the polls are all but useless in those races. Hickenlooper is still a lock for Governor of Colorado, and Maes looks likely to drag the Republican party to minor party status with less than 10% of the vote. Propositions 60, 61, 62, 63 and 101 are all on track to fail decisively.

I was particularly struck by immense gender gap in the races for Governor and U.S. Senate. Women favor Democrats. The gender gap in the Hickenlooper-Tancredo race is 28 percentage points. Men actually favor Tancredo over Hickenlooper, 46-43, while women prefer Hickenlooper over Tancredo decisively, 56-31. Only 20% of Republicans surveyed favor their party's nominee Dan Maes, and his support from all likely voters is just 9%.

There is also a 24 percentage point swing between Bennet and Buck along gender lines.

53 percent of respondents supporting Buck are men and 53 percent of respondents supporting Bennet are women. Also, about 40 percent of Buck's supporters are women, while 42 percent of Bennet's supporters are men.

Indeed, the fact that women more intensely dislike Tancredo than they dislike Buck is particularly striking, because Buck has taken far more overtly sexist stances in the race.

This set of polls don't mention it, but there is also a resurgent generation gap. The young are much more liberal than the old. The Republican party is the party of cranky old men. The Democratic party is the party of compassionate young women.

Today's survey also included polling on side issues. Marijuana legalization was favored 46-43. Arizona style anti-immigration laws were favored 57-40.

President Obama's approval ratings in Colorado have gone from 36-53 in September to 43-49 in October, i.e. from -17 to -6.

Jobs and the economy is the #1 issue for a large share of voters of all political persuasions (67% of Democrats, 64% of Republicans and 62% of unaffiliated voters). Republicans care next about the federal deficit (16%) and immigration (13%). Independents also care about the deficit first (12%) and the immigration (10%) second. The federal deficit and health care are tied (at 7% each) as runner up concerns for Democrats.

On tax cuts, 10% think all of the Bush tax cuts should expire, a 47% plurality favor the administration position of extending them only for the non-wealthy, and 30% think that even tax cuts for the rich should be extended.

Despite the importance across party lines of deficit reduction, 76% of Republican voters, 46% of unaffiliated voters and 19% of Democratic voters think that all of the Bush tax cuts should be extended. How Republicans think that the deficit can be reduced while extending the Bush tax cuts is unclear. Most Republicans also don't want to cut defense, and closing the federal deficit while extending the Bush tax cuts, not cutting defense, and repealing health care reform, if not mathematically impossible, is certainly politically impossible.