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.