This election (mainly Beauprez's defeat, but also the fact Gardner barely won despite the combination of running a perfect campaign, Udall's piss-poor campaign, a GOP tsunami, general backlash against CO Dems, and Hispanic turnout not cratered) showed a few things:
1. Ken Buck's surprise loss in 2010 was not a fluke, although the phomenon isn't as strong as in Nevada, Democrats often do beat the polling here (in addition to Hickenlooper, I believe Udall and Don Quick slightly beat the polls, and Joe Neguse only lost by 2.6% despite polls consistently showing him down by 4-7 points).
2. At this point, Republicans basically need a perfect storm to win statewide against a strong, credible, and well-funded Democrat in Colorado (this may well change, but Cory Gardners are pretty rare and someone like Beauprez, Coffman, or Wayne Williams won't cut it anymore except in a Republican wave atm, unless the Dem blows it).
This is pretty much in line with CO being D+1 with an elasticity of about 5 points either way. The D's ceiling seems to be Obama 2008 ( not quite 54-46) and the R's ceiling seems to be between Gardner 2014 (49-51) and Bush 2004 (47.5-52.5). Bennett 2010 seems to be an average campaign (a really bad R going against the most generic D possible in a R wave year).
I think its been this way since the late 80s but between 1995 and 2003 it was more R+3 because the Colorado Democrats ran semi-serious candidates (and campaigns..Nader did very well here), had a major defection over relatively stupid sh**t and had a very competent R governor.
