With Republican and Democrat ballot returns neck-and-neck, it’s safe to say that the statewide election will be decided by the large chunk of unaffiliated voters. They represent about one-third of Colorado active registered voters, and account for about 28.5% of the ballots cast thus far.
On Saturday there were 455,289 ballots returned by unaffiliated voters. Of this sample, 253,631 had a voter affinity score that placed them squarely in the “moderate” classification, which is not surprising, as these voters are unaffiliated for a reason.
But who are these unaffiliateds?
Many of these voters are new voters, or voters with an inconsistent voting record. One could ask whether these are new voters registered by the Democrat Party’s Rising American Electorate Project, focused on minority, female, and Millennial voters, or if they could be a surge of “change” voters.
Clearly one block would favor Clinton, and the other Trump.
But if you drill down into these middle-of-the-road unaffiliateds who have already cast ballots, an interesting trend emerges. About 80% of this group are white, and nearly half of them are aged 45 years and older. In other words, these middle-of-the-pack unaffiliated voters seem to fit the profile of Trump voters, not Clinton voters. Is it enough to overcome the Clinton machine? Well, we’ll know for sure in a little more than 24 hours.
Stay tuned, PeakNation™. Tomorrow could get interesting….