CO-4: Boebert in hot water again (1/7)

[patzer]

Attempting an analysis of the district to try to find a potentially winning Dem voter coalition, by breaking it down into three separate sections:



Yellow = Douglas County and immediate surroundings. 401,033 people (55.6% of the 4th's population). 256,100 votes in 2020 (57.9% of the district's votes) (63.9% turnout). Trump+18.1 in 2016, Trump+7.1 in 2020.

Red = Fort Collins suburbs. 155,051 people (21.5% of the 4th's population). 97,206 votes in 2020 presidential (22.0% of the district's votes) (62.7% turnout). Trump+23.4 in 2016, Trump+14.7 in 2020.

Green = sprawling eastern plains. 165,710 people (23.0% of the 4th's population). 88,907 votes in 2020 presidential (20.1% of the district's votes) (53.7% turnout). Trump+56.2 in 2016, Trump+55.5 in 2020.

The immediate lesson to learn is that the green area (eastern plains) is a minor component to the district, with the lower turnout there making its relevance even less, but that it's so heavily Republican that it still carries a significant impact.

Let's imagine, for example, that the 2016-20 trend were repeated in 2024, with the result being the yellow area being Biden+3.9, red being Trump+6.0, and green being Trump+54.8. Yellow and red together would be narrowly Democratic-leaning (by 0.9%), but add green and the whole lot is suddenly R+10.1.

However... there is another slightly useful factor for Dems here. Population growth. Yellow area VAP grew by 33.1% from 2010-2020, red area VAP grew by 34.8%, green area VAP grew by... 3.8%. Extend that trend to 2024, and one would expect the portion of the district's votes occurring in the yellow area to grow from 57.9% in 2020 to 59.0% in 2024, the portion occurring in the red area to grow from 22.0% in 2020 to 22.5% in 2024, and the portion occurring in the green area to drop from 20.1% in 2020 to 18.5% in 2024. Which helps slightly.

Putting all of this together to try to find a winning coalition for a potential Democrat in this district... The plains clearly won't shift left much no matter what, let's put them at R+55. The difficulty is that even if that area is only 18% of the votes in the district, it is strong enough that the remainder of the votes in the district need to lean Dem heavily to counter it. It seems to me that what you'd need is along the lines of the yellow area voting D+15 and the red area voting D+6 (or yellow voting D+16 and red voting D+3.5, or yellow voting D+14 and red voting D+8.5, etc). That would just about be enough to get the seat to flip.

Conveniently, the partisan lean of the yellow area precisely matches the partisan lean of Douglas County as a whole, as the few non-Douglas areas in it pretty much perfectly match up. So, my conclusion is that a Democrat winning this district would need to win Douglas County by around 15 points.

It's a (very) tall order, however, if the Republican nominee does end up being Lauren Boebert (an extremely poor fit for the district) and the Democrats were to find a high quality moderate candidate as a recruit able to pull in large amounts of anti-Boebert resist money (and potentially even an endorsement from Ken Buck), I don't think I would entirely rule out an upset.