Colorado Early Voting Turnout - Oct. 26

With one week left before Election Day, more than 1,790,827 Colorado voters have already cast their ballots, far outpacing ballot returns compared to the same time period before the previous two federal elections.

As of late Monday, the latest figures available, 1.79 million of the 3.7 million active voters in the state have cast ballots, Democratic voters slightly leading Unaffiliated voters in ballots returned.

Statewide, 37% of the ballots that have been cast so far are from registered Democrats, 35.5% are from Unaffiliated voters and 26.4% from Republicans.

Across in the 29 counties that make up the 3rd Congressional District, where the ultra-right Republican Lauren Boebert and moderate Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush are campaigning for that now open seat, 217,242 ballots have been cast through Monday, which makes up about 47% of all active voters in the district.

To date, 71.6K Democrats, 72K Republicans, 71K Unaffiliateds, and a smattering of 3rd party voters in the 29 counties that make up the 3rd district have cast ballots.

In the district’s two most populous counties, on opposite sides of the state and opposite ends of the political spectrum, 19.8% (43K) of ballots cast are from left-leaning Pueblo County, compared with 22.3% (48K) of the ballots from right-leaning Mesa County.

In Pueblo County, Democrats are out voting Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin, and in Mesa County Republicans are out voting Democrats by slightly less than a 2-to-1 margin. But it is the Unaffiliated voters in each county who have become the real political power brokers in deciding who wins elections. 

Age Group	Reg Voters	Share of Reg Voters	Voted Nov 20	% of Age Grp That Has Voted	GOP Voters Nov 20	Dem Voters Nov 20	UAF Voters Nov 20
18-19	2,456	2.1%	643	26.2%	186	123	317
20-24	8,360	7.3%	1,547	18.5%	436	347	731
25-29	9,242	8.1%	1,839	19.9%	522	444	818
30-34	9,495	8.3%	2,288	24.1%	748	465	997
35-39	10,072	8.8%	2,781	27.6%	940	598	1,171
40-44	8,598	7.5%	2,562	29.8%	918	545	1,043
45-49	7,853	6.8%	2,796	35.6%	1,097	579	1,069
50-54	7,855	6.8%	3,120	39.7%	1,394	594	1,085
55-59	9,952	8.7%	4,498	45.2%	1,986	901	1,544
60-64	10,900	9.5%	6,027	55.3%	2,436	1,482	2,045
65-69	10,128	8.8%	6,438	63.6%	2,512	1,773	2,101
70-74	7,899	6.9%	5,485	69.4%	2,324	1,403	1,721
75-79	5,298	4.6%	3,701	69.9%	1,799	876	1,013
80-84	3,346	2.9%	2,332	69.7%	1,245	545	539
85+	3,336	2.9%	1,904	57.1%	948	531	418
All	114,790	100.0%	47,961	41.8%	19,491	11,206	16,612

Table 1 - Mesa Co. Voters By Age Group

In Mesa County it is the oldest cohorts of voters who have cast the most ballots through late Monday. The median age of all voters who have so far cast their ballots is 61 years old.  

Republicans have a slight advantage over Democrats in the number of active registered voters in the 3rd district, 160,000 to 133,000. But unaffiliated voters outnumber them both with nearly 192,000 registered voters.

While multiple Colorado statewide polls conducted through 2020 consistently show Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump and Democrat John Hickenlooper leading incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner by double-digit margins, the polls indicate closer races for those men among 3rd Congressional District voters. Four years ago, Trump won the district by nearly 12 percentage points.

There are several indicators that Mitsch Bush also leads Boebert in the CO-3 district race itself. Not only does the most recent polling continue to show Mitsch Bush with a slight lead over Republican Boebert, early ballot returns and campaign fundraising numbers also favor Mitsch Bush.

An internal poll released Monday, commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, confirms earlier polls that Mitsch Bush has a slight one point lead over Boebert. While that poll found Mitsch Bush only has an overall one point advantage, it also found she has a 17-point advantage among unaffiliated voters. That’s important given the latest ballot return numbers from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office late Monday show a three-way tie in ballots cast from Democratic, Unaffiliated, and Republican voters.

The last campaign filing with the Federal Election Commission before the Nov. 3 general election shows Mitsch Bush continuing to raise more campaign cash than Boebert, including pulling in nearly twice as much among voters in the 29-county district.

Overall, Mitsch Bush has raised a record $4.2 million since January, nearly twice as much as Boebert’s $2.3 million.

While the bulk of those donations have come from outside the district, since the June primary Mitsch Bush has collected about $837,000 from voters in the district compared to Boebert’s $482,000.

This is the second presidential election in Colorado with all mail ballots. The coronavirus pandemic and attention on mail ballots is driving numbers to all-time highs and scrambling traditional turnout patterns.

So far, registered Democrats represent the largest group of early votes at 53%, followed by Republicans at 41% andunaffiliated voters not aligned with a political party at 36%.

In Colorado, mail ballots are sent to all active registered voters and began to hit the mail Oct. 9. The vast majority of the early votes cast to date are mail ballots. Only 2% came from in-person voting, according to the state. People may register to vote and cast a ballot until 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Colorado counted 4.1 million voters at the start of October, according to the latest figures available. That’s a 10% increase since the 2016 election, up 386,687 voters.

The nearly 2.8 million Colorado voters who cast ballots in 2016 ranked the state fourth in the nation in turnout at 71.9% of the eligible voting population, according to the U.S. Elections Project.

The 2020 turnout is exceeding the previous federal elections, as shown on the chart below.