Results: 12:40 from The Denver Post
Senate [D] - 93% reporting
Michael Bennet 181,157 54.2%
Andrew Romanoff 152,698 45.7%
Senate [R] - 93% reporting
Ken Buck 207,519 51.6%
Jane Norton 194,484 48.3%
Governor [R] - 93% reporting
Dan Maes 194,021 50.6%
Scott McInnis 188,918 49.3%
12:40 - Dan Maes has declared victory. And hile I think he should wait for someone else to do so first, it's late, he's right, and so I'm going to agree and go to bed.
One note to the Colorado Republican party - if you want to really tear your party apart, then pressure Maes to withdraw or withhold support from him. Because sticking it to your primary voters will be a gigantic message that their opinion doesn't count. You could have done this with McInnis because of the plagarism incident. But booting Maes - that would really damage the Colorado GOP.
11:15 - I think Dan Maes has it. 0.7% difference and inly 14% of the vote left. It's a squeaker but a wins a win. My guess is the main thing holding back anyone declaring for Maes is that can't believe someone with no political experience is going to win.
10:03 - So I wrote the below and then hit ColoradoPols and we've got a couple of the Bennet supporters being jerks about winning. Everyone else apparently got the memo about the primary being over. Hopefully those few will work it out of their system tonight - the general is going to be a very close race.
9:25 - Ok look everyone - the primary is over. That means we drop the primary fight, pull our big boy pants on, and focus on the general election. Not a word about the primary race (except for lessons learned in how to run in the general). It's over.
9:20 - Denver Post called it for Ken Buck.
8:50 - 728 votes difference between Maes and McInnis. This is going down to the wire. But either way, it's amazing that a candidate with no experience, no contacts, and no money was able to do this well against the annointed candidate. The plagarism incident didn't help McInnis, but still this is so unexpected.
8:28 - Updating regularly I keep seeing the small shifts over time in the percentages. McInnis keeps getting closer and closer to Maes. I don't know where these final votes are coming from, maybe the last couple of days. But they are trending McInnis.
8:24 - I think Ken Buck has it, he's ahead by 3% with 64% in. Damn close but a win is a win. Bad news for us Dems because I think he is a much bigger threat to Bennet than Norton. This is going to be a really tough race.
8:15 - False alarm on McInnis/Maes. Just did a refresh of the Denver Post page and the number for Dan Maes did not change but the one for Scott McInnis dropped so Dan Maes is still winning. Must have been an interesting 2 minutes at both of their campaign parties.
8:10 - Scott McInnis just moved into the lead over Dan Maes - big switch in 60% - 63% of the vote in.
8:00 - With Michael Bennet beating Andrew Romanoff 55%/45% a comment on what that means. Senator Bennet was the incumbent, spent 5 million plus on the primary, had the active support of President Obama and most every major Democrat in the state, etc. Yet he was only able to win by 5%. This is not a good sign for the general election. Update about comment below - I list the difference in votes needed to flip the election - if Romanoff received an additional 5% of the vote, he would have won.
I hope Michael Bennet will take an honest critical look at his campaign team, campaign strategy, and political strategy (in the Senate). Because Ken Buck will have a lot more resources than Andrew Romanoff did. And Ken Buck is a formidible campaigner.
7:53 - Fox News is reporting the Bennet campaign has just called the race for Bennet. Probably a fair judgement but generally a campaign waits for the news media to call it. Update: The Denver Post just called it for Bennet - they probably had a heads up.
7:33 - The two Republican races are still neck & neck. But Michael Bennet continues to very very slowly pull ahead of Andrew Romanoff. Even if Romanoff strongholds haven't reported most of their votes, those places are, at best 55% Romanoff and the difference in votes is not that much. Hard to see Romanoff winning at this point.
7:20 - It's still anyone's race because we don't know what counties are reporting how much yet. For example, Boulder County has basically reported 3 days of mail in ballots so far, maybe 10% of the total. The big surprise is Buck Norton is not only close, but Norton is in the lead. I figured Buck had the strongest win in any of the 3 races.
7:05 - Initial results from Jefferson County:
Andrew Romanoff (DEM) 45.22% 18,260
Michael F. Bennet (DEM) 54.78% 22,120
Ken Buck (REP) 47.86% 21,868
Jane Norton (REP) 52.14% 23,828
Dan Maes (REP) 52.63% 22,059
Scott McInnis (REP) 47.37% 19,857
7:00 - Initial results from Boulder County (which is more liberal than the state as a whole):
ANDREW ROMANOFF 12,735 51.54%
MICHAEL F. BENNET 11,973 48.46%
KEN BUCK 6,568 55.26%
JANE NORTON 5,317 44.74%
DAN MAES 6,516 57.85%
SCOTT MCINNIS 4,748 42.15%
6:30 - just got a robo-poll for the general election. It was even-handed in asking the questions wanting my opinion on:
It then identified as paid for by the RNC. So those are the initial items they are considering for the general election. Interesting that there's nothing about jobs or the economy, which is the #1 issue for most voters. Either they're hoping they can use questions that divide people more or they realize they don't have a good record either on jobs and the economy.
6:25 - My blog Liberal and Loving It gets a lot of traffic when ballots are out. It spiked when the ballots first landed, dropped back a bit over the last 3 weeks, spiked again yesterday, and then doubled again today. So my guess is votes today will be roughly twice what they were yesterday. That makes today the biggest day, but a small part of the total.
5:25 - There have been a lot of studies showing that while individuals suck at predicting (including experts), the average of everyone's prediction tends to be very very close. Over on ColoradoPols they are asking for predicitions and taking a look at them, we're pretty much headed for a tie in all 3 races. We may be in for a late night.
With that said, I think most counties will post the results all ballots through noon today right around 7:00 tonight. So we'll have maybe 80% of the count to start. Any lead of 3 points or more will be very hard to claw back with the remaining votes.
5:10 - h/t to ColoradoPols, according to Magellan Strategies
In the Colorado Democrat and Republican primary elections, voters that have never voted in a primary are having a big impact on the overall primary vote. In the Republican primary at least 87,314 voters, or 28% of Republican votes cast have been among voters that have never voted in a primary
5:00 - This will be a live blog running tonight until we have winners declared in the big three races. What's amazing is all three are complete toss-ups according to the polls. What makes for a winning campaign has sure changed, in the old days the establishment endorsement and much larger bank account would mean an easy win tonight for Michael Bennet, Jane Norton, and Scott McInnis.
I think a lot of this difference is due to the web. People can easily get information on the candidates from numerous sources and so they are not dependent on TV ads and endorsements. And not only can find more info, but generally trip over it all over the web. Personally I think this is a great change.
So, number of ballots in according to the Secretary of State as of 3:00 today (blowing all previous records out of the water) is:
| Party | Ballots Returned | Total Active Voters | Percent Returned |
| Democrats | 310,671 | 817,458 | 38% |
| Republicans | 358,953 | 855,667 | 42% |
Elections - Colorado Secretary of State
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Democrats need to hammer them on so many issues, it will be hard to narrow it down, but they have done nothing since losing power in the Senate and House except to be obstructionists. Maybe they should be labeled the Dam building party because they try to hold back progress. The fact is that the Democrats must adopt the republican strategy of demonizing the so-called conservatives and their leaders as Republicans do in every election. The only thing is, the Democrats have far more issues to work with than the Republicans do.
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For my method for calculating voter turnout rates, which are used widely by the media and academia, see here: http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm.
Congrats to the winners' volunteers.
So we need to keep it up, we need to make sure in November that we do keep the house and the Senate and add some more seats to the Democrats.
So they show the total of votes for Rethugs and Democrats at 3:00pm yesterday what was the actual count after that because even if it was a mail in election you could also go to the polls.
Knowing the numbers is a good thing, and 40k people is a very low margin. That simply means there needs to be a Get Out The Vote Strategy specifically in Colorado. So, either way, it's up to the PEOPLE of Colorado who want to see change to get off their rear ends and participate or shutup.
Make your choice.
Actually the progressive supported candidate losing a primary is also a prime example of the need for and reinforcement of Obama's moderation tactics...So double bad news.
Oh yeah? Let's see people try finding numerous sources about Dan Maes. I tried to start the Wikipedia article on him when I read that he had won the convention vote, and I misread it as saying he had won the nomination. Google turned up diddly about him.
So, if you can't vote for Bennet, at least get out and vote against Buck.
Snark.
Accented snark.
I mean you're right, but...zinger.
It's funny that they targeted El Paso county to beat each other since neither one would have a chance of winning El Paso county in November. Irony, I suppose.