According to the latest polls, McCain leads Obama by 2% in the Centennial State. That’s not extremely significant, until you look at who grabs 3% of the vote. Yeah, that’s right. Ralph Nader.
Why Colorado is so important
If you look at RealClearPolitics’ electoral map, you’ll see there are a lot of big states up for grabs. Colorado is one of them. It may only have 9 electoral votes, but in this election, it’s a crucial battleground (the Democrats even nominated Barack Obama in Denver). Right now, Ohio and Nevada are trending ever so slightly to the right, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire is trending ever so slightly to the left, and New Mexico (which has only been polled once after the conventions), Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Colorado are too close to call. If we also gave Obama Pennsylvania (which he would need to win in this scenario and which gives him a 1.6% lead) and McCain Virginia (which he would then need to win this scenario and which gives him a 1.4% lead), whoever wins Colorado wins the election.
Colorado demographics
Colorado has several factors that make it, well, different from the rest of the country. It’s got a huge number of Christians. 44% of the state is Protestant, 19% Catholic, 2% Jewish, 2% Mormon, 1% Muslim, 1% other religion, and 27% “unaffiliated”. By comparison, Tennessee, home of the Southern Baptist Convention, is “only” 82% Christian. It’s also a very libertarian state, being one of the few states that has a flat income tax (and the state that gave Ron Paul 10% in the caucuses).This ends up making for a very untraditional Republican Party, made up of Focus on the Family activists and Tom Tancredo conservatives. The party has started to lose its strong grip, however. The 2004 Senate election was won by a Democrat (in part, because of a very negative Republican primary and in part because the New York Times mistakenly ran a story identifying the Republican, Coors, with the KKK, right before the election). 2006 also showed the Democrats take the governorship with moderate Bill Ritter. But Colorado is still most definitely a toss-up, with Obama’s lead at a statistically irrelevant 0.6%.
The candidates
Obama won Colorado easily in his caucus, gaining 66.53% of the vote. On the other hand, John McCain lost the state with only 18.39%, losing to Mitt Romney (60.11%, and social conservative Mike Huckabee took 12.76%). Sarah Palin’s been giving McCain a comeback, although perhaps not as much as in other states.
One thing is definite: no matter how libertarian, Bob Barr is starting to lose favor in the Centennial State, only garnering 1%. On the other hand, Ralph Nader gets 3%. Now, McCain is certainly not going to pick up any Ralph Nader votes. On the other hand, Nader’s constituents are certainly the young, anti-establishment crowd that Obama would ordinarily win. 3% is a fairly big number, considering that McCain’s lead is only 2%. Imagine this scenario. The election plays out as detailed above (MI, MN, NH, and PA go left, OH, NV, and VA go right), making Colorado the deciding state. Colorado then plumps for McCain by a tiny margin, while Nader gets a small percentage that may have tipped the state blue. Feasible? Definitely. Likely? Getting much more so, unless Obama gets a sudden surge (in which case Virginia might tip blue, giving Obama the win anyway) or McCain starts pulling away (in which case Pennsylvania might tip red, giving McCain the win anyway). No matter what happens, however, Colorado is the place to watch.
