So much of the prognosticating about the close electoral contests in Colorado hinges on how the “likely voter” is leaning.
The polls are awfully close. A few points this way. A few points the other. It seems that “likely voters” are split in key races such as the U.S. Senate seat, the gubernatorial race and the 6th Congressional District.
But what if the voters who actually cast ballots in this November’s contests are different — even slightly different — from those expected?
Political insiders, those who practice the dark art of identifying potential supporters and getting them to vote, persuasively make the case that Colorado’s election is being shaped by new and different forces.
And no one is entirely sure how that’s going to play when the votes are counted on Nov. 4.
“Anyone who tells you they have a really good handle on who is going to vote is lying,” says Sean Tonner, a Colorado-based GOP strategist. “This is the gold rush, and everyone is trying to figure out where to mine.”
The new factors in Colorado mostly come from a sweeping that requires all-mail ballots. It also says that ballots will be sent to voters who had been classified as inactive due to having failed to vote in a prior election. And it allows voters to register and vote on Election Day — instead of having to register weeks in advance of the election.
But there are other factors, too, including increasing technological sophistication, more extensive resources dedicated to the so-called “ground game,” better early organization — particularly on the part of Democrats — and lessons learned from prior election cycles.
Organizations with loyalties to both parties, but especially Democrats, are spending big in the hopes of making these changes play to their advantage.
A recent of spending on staff and voter contact operations gives a taste of the money involved. The Times found that groups affiliated with or working independently to re-elect Democratic Sen. Mark Udall had spent $4.4 million on ground game operations, as compared to $556,000 for Republican Cory Gardner.
This sort of spending is notoriously hard to track, but The Times relied on Federal Elections Commission data and looked at money spent by the candidate, the party and outside groups on voter turnout efforts.
The numbers are a bit dated — report dates are in the summer for some categories — but the analysis offers an idea of who was doing what in the months leading up to the election.
The numbers seemingly dovetail with a strategy statement recently issued by Udall campaign manager Adam Dunstone, who wrote that the 2014 campaign has 25 field offices, more than 100 field organizers, and over 3,200 volunteers. Dunstone noted that it dwarfs the groundbreaking 2010 effort that saw Michael Bennet elected to the Senate in a tight race.
Bennet, who now is chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, recently explained to the Post editorial board just what all of those community-based campaign workers and volunteers are doing.
“They are, with incredible precision, calling people and knocking on doors and getting people prepared to vote,” Bennet said.
The lessons that Bennet learned from his 2010 win over GOP challenger Ken Buck are being replicated, refined and applied more broadly to races around the country.
The twist in Colorado is that it all had to start sooner due to the advent of the all-mail ballot. The sophisticated databases that identify and categorize potential voters had to be created earlier. The identification of voters also had to be pinpointed earlier. And the information collected can be mind-boggling, said Tonner, the GOP strategist.
“They get so granular,” Tonner said. “In some cases, I’ll know if a person is a dog owner, is a concealed-carry permit-holder and subscribes to a trucker magazine.”
The organizations also have, in some cases, histories of who previously got absentee ballots and how long those voters typically held onto ballots before turning them in. If a voter exceeds his usual timeframe, he might get a call or a visit if he seems a likely supporter of the organization’s favored candidate or cause.
Craig Hughes, a Democratic strategist who managed Bennet’s 2010 Senate campaign, says the duration of the ground game gives an advantage not to a particular party, but to the campaign that is more organized. And, at least up until now, that has been Democrats. The effort involves not just sophistication, but endurance as well.
“It’s not a one-day effort,” he said. “It’s 20 days.”
And it takes months to build an effective organization, he said. One of the lessons of the 2008 campaign to elect Barack Obama president, Hughes said, was the power of the volunteer. Instead of asking them to knock on doors and read a scripted pitch, they are told to invoke their own stories.
That was the big take-away from ’08, Hughes said. In 2010, it was the power of messaging and reaching a targeted voter. In 2012, modeling and testing approaches was the new frontier. In 2014, Hughes sees the challenge as taking the accumulated experience and applying that in a typically low-turnout, non-presidential election year — and one in which a new elections law throws a mighty big monkey wrench into the mix.
One challenge that stands out is boosting turnout among younger voters. A of voters ages 18 to 29 conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics earlier this year found that less than one in four said they would “definitely” vote in the November elections.
Pollsters said the result was due to lack of trust in political institutions and cynicism about the political process.
In Colorado, Steve Fenberg, executive director of New Era Colorado, has been focusing on that group with precision and off-beat tactics. Earlier this month, New Era registered its 20,000th young voter of 2014, Fenberg said. New Era, a non-partisan voter registration and mobilization organization, claims it has run the largest voter registration drive in the state.
New Era relies on approaches that might be offensive to some, such as handing out condoms on Colorado college campuses emblazoned with the phrase, “Do It For Democracy.” Fenberg barely takes notice of raised eyebrows.
“The only people it offends are the people we’re not going after,” he said.
Since 2008, Fenberg said the group has registered 100,000 voters. But it doesn’t end there. New Era follows up with the people it registers, offering them information about elections and encouraging them to get to the polls. They have registrants’ cellphone numbers. They send them texts. They go where young people hang out — often that involves bicycles or craft beer — and encourage electoral participation.
Fenberg says 86 percent of the people his group registered in 2012 actually cast ballots.
“Our goal is to get them to vote two or three times in a row,” he said. “We try to create a habit. That’s the goal.”
Fenberg says he is not so sure pollsters accurately measure the group he targets. And he says the 2013 changes in elections laws will make it easier for young people, who tend to move frequently, to update their addresses and cast ballots. Some of the elements of the law that got little attention actually will have a significant impact on easing the way for young people to vote, he said.
“I don’t think any pollster truly knows who the likely voter is going to be in Colorado,” he said.
In a few weeks, the picture will become clearer. Regardless of who ultimately turns out to vote and why, the moving target that is the 2014 elections seems destined to add another chapter to Colorado’s political playbook.
E-mail Alicia Caldwell at acaldwell@ denverpost.com or follow her on Twitter: @AliciaMCaldwell
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