Primary election ballots will begin to be mailed Monday and, in a milestone for Colorado, more will be sent to voters unaffiliated with any political party than to Democrats and Republicans.
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Unaffiliated voters make up a majority, 50.5%, of active voters after years of growth. This is the first primary with those voters as an outright majority since Colorado opened its partisan primaries to those voters in 2016, according to secretary of state voter registration data. Those 2 million-plus voters, in turn, will receive primary ballots for the Democratic and Republican nominating contests.
And for the first time since 2018 — the first election season where unaffiliated voters could participate in party primaries — both parties have contests for statewide office. That adds a dose of intrigue as these voters get to decide which ballot to pull and whether they’re more drawn by a three-way Republican brawl for the governor’s nomination or a Democratic ticket with contests in four of the five statewide offices.
“What’s changed is the math of persuasion,” Colorado State University political science professor Kyle Saunders wrote in an email. “When more than half your electorate has no party affiliation, the primary stops being a pure base-mobilization exercise and starts being a contest over which party’s ballot is more interesting to pull.”
Democrats have 1 million active, registered voters, and there are 910,000 active, registered Republican voters. An additional 99,000 are members of third parties. Voters affiliated with a party will receive a primary ballot only for their party, if it is having one. The Libertarian Party also will have a primary election for its nominee for secretary of state, but that primary is open only to party members. The Unity Party also has two candidates for governor, and unaffiliated voters can ask their county clerks for that ballot.
Voters will have until June 30, Election Day, to decide which they want to return (and unaffiliated voters can vote in only one party’s primary; voting in two or more will lead to their ballots being rejected).
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On the Democratic side, they will have the choice between incumbent U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and state Sen. Julie Gonzales for U.S. Senate; U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser for governor; Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez and state Sen. Jessie Danielson for secretary of state; and former federal prosecutor Hetal Doshi, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and public interest attorney David Seligman for attorney general. Several congressional districts also have contested primaries.
On the Republican side, only the races for governor and attorney general are contested. State Rep. Scott Bottoms, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and political newcomer Victor Marx are duking it out to head the state government. El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen and David Willson are vying for the GOP nomination for attorney general. The Republicans also have their own congressional primaries.
Most unaffiliated voters are not truly independent and have an underlying partisan lean that likely will dictate which ballot they pull — if they pull one at all. Colorado automatically registers people to vote when they get a driver’s license, and the default is unaffiliated. The unaffiliated voters that do cast a ballot tend to be a self-selecting bunch who skew higher information and are more politically engaged.
“ ‘Majority of registrations’ and ‘majority of primary ballots cast’ are two very different things,” Saunders said. “The campaigns are fighting over the second number, which is much smaller and much harder to predict.”
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