Magellan Strategies, a Colorado based company, is proud to be publishing demographic break-outs of early voter ballot returns that will be updated daily.  Please visit our Blog for more.

Magellan Strategies understands the importance of turnout demographics in predicting the outcome of elections. Because an incorrect turnout projection can be the downfall of an otherwise impeccable survey, we go to great lengths to ensure that our survey quotas for party, gender, age range, region, and race are accurate. The foundation for this work is an analysis of past turnout in comparable elections. While exit polling can be a useful resource is this analysis, exit polls are imperfect and not available for every election. We have found that our nationwide voter file gives a much truer depiction of turnout for a given election. By purchasing a voter file soon after an election takes place, we can get an incredibly accurate snapshot of the electorate.

New election law in Colorado – the passage of House Bill 1303 in May – gives us the opportunity to get this snapshot not only after Election Day, but on a daily basis leading up to November 5^th. This is because every registered voter in the state, as long as they have provided a mailable address to their county clerk, will receive their ballot in the mail.

How this will affect turnout remains to be seen, but our daily reports will help to make sure that you are not caught off guard as you await the final results. The reports will show a daily update of ballots returned, compared side-by-side with the demographics from the November 2011 General Election.

This comparison will be especially interesting because the presence of Amendment 66 on this year’s ballot mirrors the presence on the November 2011 ballot of Proposition 103, State Senator Rollie Heath’s proposed income tax increase to support public education, which was defeated by a 63% to 37% margin. As a service to our clients, friends, and all of Colorado’s political observers, our daily reports will provide demographics of the ballots returned in attempt to see, before November 5^th, whether Amendment 66 awaits a similar fate: