In 2008, riding high on the backlash against Republicans, Democrats celebrated Barack Obama’s nomination on a stage in Denver, Colorado. It was the high point of a Democratic surge in West according the Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli. “It really, just about the mid-last decade, began moving dramatically toward the democratic side. And in the case of Colorado, when in 2008 the President won the state by 9 percentage points, that’s more than he won nationally. Typically it’s hard for a democrat to win the presidency here much less win it by more than his national average.”<\/p>\n
A year and a half later polling shows the western Democratic tide may turn. According to the Cook Political Report, four western governor seats currently held by Democratic incumbents (Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma) are toss-ups, leaning or likely to become Republican in this year’s elections. Three western U.S. Senate seats held by Dems from Colorado, North Dakota and Nevada are also listed as in jeopardy, as well as Democratically held House seats from Colorado’s 4th District, Idaho’s 1st District, New Mexico’s 2nd and Nevada’s 4th.<\/p>\n
Colorado’s Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams says the Democrats’ problems can be traced to the West’s notoriously independent electorate. “Those unaffiliated voters in Colorado and throughout the Rocky Mountain West who swung so heavily to President Obama and Democratic candidates in the last two election cycles, have now rejected the Obama, Democratic agenda. And they’re coming back towards Republicans and that’s our opportunity in 2010.”<\/p>\n
Political Analyst and Fox News Contributor Michael Barone believes the Democrats western success in 2008 was largely because they were able to bring sizable numbers of new voters to polls. “They brought young voters, they brought hispanic voters into the electorate that hadn’t been there before. They delivered for Barack Obama in 2008, and now the polling evidence suggests that they’re not so enthusiastic for him any more and are disapproving of the job he’s doing.”<\/p>\n
And that dissatisfaction with the policies of the leader of their party, Ciruli says, makes it very hard for Democratic incumbents in an off-year election. “And I think Obama by so committing himself to health care is essentially telling these democrats you’re on your own.”<\/p>\n
Pat Waak, who chairs the Colorado Democratic Party, believes when voters fill out their ballots seven months from now, their focus will not be on Washington, D.C. “People tend to look at their candidate, look at their voting record and they’ll make their decisions on that basis and not what’s happening a thousand miles away.” Those Colorado voters, having lead the Democratic advance into the American West, will be closely watched on election day according to Ciruli, “Colorado is really the harbinger of what’s going on in the country politically, particularly throughout all of the West. “<\/p>\n
Election day is still a half year away, but if the current trend stays on track the American West may once again take on a reddish tinge in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2008, riding high on the backlash against Republicans, Democrats celebrated Barack Obama’s nomination on a stage in Denver, Colorado. It was the high point of a Democratic surge in West according the Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli. “It really, just about the mid-last decade, began moving dramatically toward the democratic side. And in the case […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4537,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4537"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}