In case you missed it, the Denver Post’s take on the election results is the Democrat’s gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis has the mojo to win the whole shebang.
Election takeaways: Colorado’s primaries show Democrats have momentum heading into November
Primary election results, impacts and largest voter turnout
Part of their reasoning is the wide margin by which Polis won over his closest Democratic contender — the Boulder liberal beat Cary Kennedy by nearly 20 percent.
That’s pretty impressive, but guess who also won by a wide margin? Republican Walker Stapleton won over his closest competitor Victor Mitchell by nearly 18 percent — and Stapleton didn’t spend upwards of $13 million to buy his victory.
The Post goes on to brag about the higher voter turnout among Democrats, but failed to mention the huge majority turned out to vote against Polis.
Polis pulled in a total of 279,642 votes, but 344,786 voters cast ballots for the other guys, which means Polis lost to the field of all the other candidates by19 percent.
Meanwhile, Stapleton pulled in 237,421 votes and 260,629 votes went to the other contenders, which means he only lost by 9 percent to the entire field of candidates.
Stapleton clearly has more momentum in his own party, and we expect to see his popularity grow by leaps and bounds with independent voters over the Democrat’s liberal from Boulder.
Voter turnout was certainly strong, but to assume they will all just magically flock to Polis in November — to borrow a cliche — makes an ass of u and me.