Election May Well Come Down to Colorado

RCP/Pittsburgh Tribune ^ | 10/14/12 | Selena Zito

[NoobRep]

If businessman Coors has a good night on Nov. 6, so will Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, likely not only in Colorado but nationwide.

Colorado is looking like a state that is the national average, perhaps a tick or two rightward, according to Sean Trende, a savvy number-cruncher and Yale-trained political scientist for the website RealClearPolitics.

“So if Romney is winning Colorado, it probably means he is headed for a decent night,” Trende said of the relatively new electoral trend of a Western state signaling a presidential win.

If Romney wins here comfortably, that probably means a national win on the scale of George Bush in 2004, or even Obama in 2008, Trende said.

Right now, he said, Colorado’s numbers look pretty good for Romney: “We have him up a half-point in the RCP Average, with the president down to about 47 percent of the vote. That’s not a great position for the president to be in.”

[marktwain]

Obama voters from 2008 are mostly disinterested-that seems to be a nationwide trend, not just in CO. If 1/3 of them vote for Romney and another 1/3 stay home this will be a beatdown.

I think that if just 1/16 vote for Romney and 1/16 stay home, Romney wins with a mandate. That would be a net change of 3/16 or 18.75% of the Democrat vote, or a 10% shift in the overall vote. 46.2% for Obama, 48.6% for Romney.

It does not add up to a hundred because it assumes the same turnout as 2008, in the same proportion. That is very unlikely. Turnout should be higher for Romney than it was for McCain in 2008.