Colorado Caucus Predictions

[California8429]

Caucus is tonight, predict the straw poll

McInnis 59%
Maes 41%

Romanoff 54%
Bennet 46%

Norton 39%
Buck 33%
Wiens 14%
Tidwell 13%
Barton 1%

Though it can truly be anything

[California8429]

Actual...so far

50.6% Romanoff
41.8% Bennet

37.66% Norton
37.07% Buck
16.9% Wiens
7% Tidwell

60.68% McInnis
38.61% Maes

Norton and Buck have been trading leads for awhile now

[California8429]

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^^^^^^^same as long as Norton is the nominee, if its Buck or Tidwell I'll support them

[California8429]

So Colorado has both caucus and primary

What are Ronanoff's chances of actually taking home the primary as well?

The primary, as far as I can tell, is essentially a nonbinding straw poll. It's been pointed out (constantly) that Ken Salazar and Pete Coors both lost the caucus vote in 2004, but won their respective primary nominations. I wouldn't read too much into it.

I think you mean caucus, but you are right. Caucus is just really nothing, what matters is the delegates that will decide who gets on the ballot. Of course you can spend a half million to petition on, but that is much harder. It Romanoff performs better at the convention (gets more delegates then Bennet) he'd have a shot, but he'd need to knock or almost knock Bennet off the ballot and to do that his speech needs to be magneficent

[California8429]

I'm glad Romanoff won, since that might improve his prospects in the primary. Why do many Teabaggers hate Norton so much? She is trying to be as conservative as possible. Isn't that what they want? I mean, she called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. That's 1930s conservatism for you.

Norton's record shows other wise and she is a Washington puppet, hence why tea partiers hate her

[California8429]

For us non-Coloradans, how does this work? Apparently a candidate has to get a threshhold percentage of caucus votes or they have to spend an extra half-million to be placed on the primary ballot? Otherwise its a beauty pageant/organization builder that grants bragging rights to the winners, right?

I'm not surprised Romanoff is beating Bennett here. He's running from Bennett's left as the darling of the darling of the activists and netroots crowd. Which are exactly the type of people most likely to show up to vote in a nonbinding party caucus.

Candidates who will appear on the primary ballot are designated at the statewide convention.  To be designated, a candidate must receive 30% or more of the vote at the convention.  If no candidates receive 30% of the vote, the top two candidates are designated.  If more than one candidate is designated, the top voter getter receives top line on the primary ballot.

Candidates may also petition to be placed on the primary ballot. However, a candidate who attempted to be designated by a convention, must receive 10% support in order to petition.  For statewide office, petition candidates require 1500 signatures from each congressional district.  Petition candidates appear on the ballot below those designated by the convention.

The same system is used for other offices, but for district offices US House, legislature, etc, the designation occurs at district or county conventions (conventions in Colorado are formally known as "assemblies").

The precinct caucuses are the first stage.  Precinct caucuses elect delegates to county conventions.  County conventions elect delegates to state conventions.

Everything up to this point, is according to state law.  But everything as far as the conduct of caucuses and assemblies, apportionment of delegates, and selection of delegates, is according to party rules.

The Democrats have decided to base their delegate selection process on the senatorial nomination, with delegates at each level apportioned based on the share of the votes favoring each candidate at the particular caucus or assembly.  There is a 15% threshold.  Overall, there were about 7 persons participating in each precinct caucus for the Democrats, and 8 for the Republicans.  But this varied greatly between counties.  And likely varied even more within counties.  The percentages reported are the totally raw numbers, and do not reflect any weighting based on delegate apportionment.

So in essence it works like the system used in Iowa for its presidential caucuses, except instead of the state convention choosing delegates to the national conventions, one or more candidates are designated for the primary ballot.

Since delegates also participate in the designation of candidates for other offices, a smart candidate would try to influence the selection of actual delegates.  If you were wanting to run for Congress, you might try to get your supporters elected as delegates among both Romanoff and Bennett delegations.  And then at the district convention, you would treat all the delegates as uncommitted to a congressional candidate.

It doesn't appear that the Republican party has any formal standards for delegation selection, and since they have contested nomination races for both senator and governor it would be hard to do in any case.  The preference polls at the convention were simply straw polls to get some press coverage.

Presumably, Norton and McInnis supporters would work together, and they likely have more support among long term party activists.  Insurgents may have been able to flood individual precinct caucuses.  While 250 precinct participants translates to 1% of the preference poll, it might not come close to translating into 1% of the delegates, depending on how it was concentrated.

If a candidate narrowly missed 30% at the state convention, they would probably have little difficulty petitioning on to the primary ballot.  If a candidate didn't come close, they not only have the problem of getting on the ballot, they have the problem of getting noticed since they lacked any sort of grassroots support.  Which means they are also going to have to raise bunches of money for media buys for the primary.

if you don't make the convention 30% it actually IS pretty much impossible to make the state wide ballot. Holtzman missed it barely in 2006, had huge cash in the campaign bank, got was it double ot triple the signatures needed but wasn't let on the ballot because "not enough were valid"

[California8429]

If a candidate narrowly missed 30% at the state convention, they would probably have little difficulty petitioning on to the primary ballot.  If a candidate didn't come close, they not only have the problem of getting on the ballot, they have the problem of getting noticed since they lacked any sort of grassroots support.  Which means they are also going to have to raise bunches of money for media buys for the primary.

if you don't make the convention 30% it actually IS pretty much impossible to make the state wide ballot. Holtzman missed it barely in 2006, had huge cash in the campaign bank, got was it double ot triple the signatures needed but wasn't let on the ballot because "not enough were valid"

Holtzman's problem was that the people he hired were sloppy.  1000s of signatures were disallowed because they weren't attributed to congressional district.  There were questions about petition circulators registering or switching to the Republican party days before beginning to circulate.  He ended up with a desperate plea to the Supreme Court, that because Colorado lets voters cast a provisional vote for statewide offices in any precinct, that meant that they were eligible to vote in any congressional district.

And in Holtzman's case, the reason he had less than 30%, was because the other candidate had over 70%.  So many of those voted for him weren't willing to continue the fight in to primary.  Otherwise, it would have only required 12 signatures per delegate.  If you are willing to go the state convention, you should be willing to do a little bit of signature gathering.

the SOS endorsed Beauprez...no bias there when she counted his signatures

[California8429]

I'm glad Romanoff won, since that might improve his prospects in the primary. Why do many Teabaggers hate Norton so much? She is trying to be as conservative as possible. Isn't that what they want? I mean, she called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. That's 1930s conservatism for you.

Norton's record shows other wise and she is a Washington puppet, hence why tea partiers hate her

What record?

This is a growing problem, I think is that the mere touch of the establishment is death. The establishment did produce some fine candidates this cycle like Portman and others. If the establishment supports a rino, then I can see the point, however, if the establishment backs a conservative I see no good reason for divisions in the party to grow over this.

She isn't a conservative. She supported Ref C which stopped CO from giving tax payer money back to the tax payers. During her term as Lt. Gov government siz/budget increased. She has never been elected, only appoin ted to eveything in life so saying she's electable is bull. Her answers are memorized, and so vague it's unbelievable. She is the puppet of many lobbyists (runs well in her family) Governor Owens (who only cares about getting up in the oil ladder in Russia) Dick Wadhams (so he can keep his job) McCain and the NRSC (so they have a rubber stamp vote). She says she's conservative, but has no record to show that while the other candidates do