As reporters, operatives and analysts continue discussing Colorado’s election results, one thing is becoming abundantly clear: messaging matters most. That’s the theme this week, at least.
There’s hard evidence from the results to underscore this reality. In candidate races, Republicans were (fairly or more often, unfairly) branded as mini-President Trumps, the latter of whose brand that didn’t appeal to the Colorado general electorate in 2016 and still doesn’t.
Don’t take our word for it. According to a poll conducted by Magellan Strategies in the week following the election, pollster David Flaherty found that Trump’s approval rating in Colorado is staggeringly upside down, with only 31 percent of respondents viewing the President favorably, compared to 62 percent who view him negatively.
In this environment, Republicans didn’t stand a chance, and they have some hard questions to answer going into the 2020 election season, when the President’s name will actually be on the ballot.
This year’s ballot initiatives told a different story, in which Colorado voters again proved averse to tax increases, government bloat, and destroying entire industries like oil and natural gas. We continue to contend that at their core, our state is sane, sound, and yes, conservative in its values.
But none of that matters when voters make decisions based on the tweets of a guy two time zones away. Trump’s personality just rubs Colorado in a different way than it might in, say, other parts of the country.
It’s hard to imagine a universe in which Trump’s bombastic rhetoric will help himself, let alone the hundreds of Colorado Republican candidates in two years’ time. That said, our ideas are still better than the left’s; we’d just like a chance to remind the people who actually decide elections.