CO-Sen, Rasmussen: Gardner in the lead

[Recalcuate]

We get it blue avatars, you are tired of hearing about Ken Buck. The point is, we have to see if history will repeat itself and ground game proves to make a difference. Democrats call voters and knock on doors, Republicans don't do much of that, some even think it's stupid.

Republicans have an 11-point lead in mail-in voting with roughly 1/3 of votes counted.  

As it turns out, ground game does make a big difference.

You need to cite where you get the numbers from, if you just state them, no one knows if they are real or not. As someone who has actually volunteered, I know that a lot of Democrats don't get their ballots out until the last week or so, which is why calling and canvassing makes the difference.

http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/COSOS/bulletins/d87e80

What you are not mentioning:

A week ago, the mail-in ballots were R+16, now they are R+11.

And there's still a week of peak-returning to go.

The final 2010 margin (when Buck lost by 2) was R+6 with mail-in ballots ...

538 answers a bit of this Buck nonsense going on around here.

Even if you assume that there's a Republican bent to the polls, using 2010 as history, Gardner would still be likely ahead. And you have to assume that the pollsters haven't made adjustments off of 2010's alleged "failure."

Plus there was Democrat bias when Udall won last time. And pollsters have a better track record when it comes to mail-in states.

It's clearly Gardner's race to lose at this point. Time is running out for Udall to make much of a charge. (And note, I am taking this non-Rasmussen Rasmussen poll with a grain of salt and looking at all the polls at the end of the day).

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-update-colorado-polling-is-probably-right-udall-is-losing/

[Recalcuate]

We get it blue avatars, you are tired of hearing about Ken Buck. The point is, we have to see if history will repeat itself and ground game proves to make a difference. Democrats call voters and knock on doors, Republicans don't do much of that, some even think it's stupid.

Republicans have an 11-point lead in mail-in voting with roughly 1/3 of votes counted. 

As it turns out, ground game does make a big difference.

You need to cite where you get the numbers from, if you just state them, no one knows if they are real or not. As someone who has actually volunteered, I know that a lot of Democrats don't get their ballots out until the last week or so, which is why calling and canvassing makes the difference.

http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/COSOS/bulletins/d87e80

What you are not mentioning:

A week ago, the mail-in ballots were R+16, now they are R+11.

And there's still a week of peak-returning to go.

The final 2010 margin (when Buck lost by 2) was R+6 with mail-in ballots ...

No, they weren't.  The GOP was leading by 15 points with only 80,000 ballots returned, which is virtually meaningless to the overall total.  Now almost 700,000 voters, more than a third of the electorate, has voted, and the GOP still has an 11 percent lead.  So Republicans have lost four points in seven days...to unaffiliated voters, which might be R-leaning this year, anyway.

Besides, more Republicans are turning in ballots then Democrats every single day in Colorado.  But the margins narrow as the vote count gets bigger because that's how statistics work.  

Just checked the new numbers: The spread is now 10.4% (R) as of yesterday. On Friday it was 12.0, which means the Ds are cutting into the R-lead by 0.8% each day now.

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/526780614880788480

The weekend was just 39% R and 35% D anymore. 1 week ago, the Republicans started out with a 47-31 advantage.

That is quite a progress for the Dems.

If the Dems keep chipping away 0.8% each day for the next week, then it will likely end at R+5, which would not be bad.

At some point, the D is going to have to come close to overtaking the R ballots received in order to close the gap to R+5 as you propose. It's a lot easier to narrow at +0.8 a day when 25% of the ballots have been returned than when 75% of the mailed-in ballots received.

At some point a R+4 day won't be good enough to move the tally that much.

I agree, the R totals will narrow, historically. However, I'm not quite sure that automatically means that Udall wins if the Dems whittle the R advantage to R+4, R+5, R+6 or R+7.